the owners of cracked houses, symbols despite themselves of an insurance system overwhelmed by climate change

Houses that move, crack and fall apart, sometimes becoming uninhabitable, irreparable and unsaleable. “It is not for nothing that we call ourselves ‘Association urgence houses fissured’: the word ’emergency’ is important”, insists Mohamed Benyahia. The day after the adoption by the National Assembly, Thursday, April 6, of a bill aimed at better compensating owners affected by the phenomenon of shrinkage-swelling of clay soils (RGA), the president of the Sarthoise branch of a collective of disaster victims of this calamity linked to periods of drought says “very happy what an important step [ait] been crossed.” “Now, the text must be quickly discussed in the Senate, that the implementing decrees be signed quickly, that things start moving right away!”

In France, more than half (54%) of single-family homes are located in areas with medium or high exposure to the RGA phenomenon. Or 10.5 million houses out of a total of 19.4 million, according to figures from the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Behind this acronym hides a relatively simple mechanical and geological phenomenon. The clay soils on which the affected buildings are built are very sensitive to water: they swell when it rains and shrink during periods of drought. The alternation between wet and dry periods thus leads to successive movements of the ground which weaken the foundations of the houses, end up making them move, and causing visible cracks in the constructions.

The text carried by the Green MP Sandrine Rousseau aims to facilitate the compensation of thousands of small owners who are struggling to obtain compensation and undertake essential work to continue to live in their homes. But the obstacle course is far from over for the victims.

More and more disaster victims, less and less recognition

A section of wall that holds on props, a fault that winds “staircase” on the facade. Here, the earthenware of the kitchen “farted in an afternoon”, there, a thick crack runs up and down a chic and modern living room, above the television. “Ah me, I have a rather special decoration”, jokes one owner. On a mild Tuesday evening in April in a communal hall in Mézières-sur-Ponthouin (Sarthe), the victims of the surrounding communes exchange photos, anecdotes and advice. “Above all, if you discover a crack, do not turn to your insurance. Contact the town hall immediately”, insists Mohamed Benyahia. This is a particularity of this disaster: only the owners of cracked houses who live in a municipality declared in a state of “drought” natural disaster can claim compensation, via the “Cat-Nat” guarantee scheme. A recognition refused until then to Mézières-sur-Ponthouin and several of its neighbors.

According to the Central Reinsurance Fund, around 4,000 cracked houses escape compensation each year because they do not meet the criteria. A study by the association Mission natural risks (PDF document)estimates their total number at 300,000. For Véronique Portier, a disaster victim determined to fight “a real injustice”this results in an estimate stuck in a binder, for lack of being able to pay the 100,000 euros that the rescue of his house, built in the early 1990s, would cost.

If the bill adopted Thursday completes its legislative course without incident, Véronique Portier and the eleven other victims identified by the town hall could well break the impasse: article 1 of the text provides for a review of the criteria for granting the guarantee “Cat-Nat”, paving the way for compensation for victims of what Sandrine Rousseau and Renaissance MP Sandra Marsaud described in a joint report (PDF document) of “denial of compensation”.

For Mohamed Benyahia, this measure alone could overcome “the source of all our problems“, namely a circular of 2019 (PDF document) which changed the criteria to be met by municipalities in order to be declared in a state of “drought” natural disaster. The president of the association of victims of the department, formerly a maths teacher, dismantles it in front of his students for one evening, with chalk, on a blackboard. Indicators, surfaces studied, dates retained, probability of future claims… He knocks “unsuitable criteria”. “As a disaster victim, we are always forced to navigate between tricks, to look at the figures… As if everything was done to exclude as many people as possible”, he continues.

The numbers seem to back him up. If, over the period 2011-2021, around 53% of the municipalities that have asked the State for recognition of the state of natural disaster due to drought have won their case, this recognition rate has plummeted to 13.3% in 2021. Before the publication of the 2019 circular decried by Mohamed Benyahia, it had peaked at around 69% in 2017 and 2018, according to the figures obtained by Sandrine Rousseau and Sandra Marsaud in their report.

Hence his caution: “the law would guarantee a certain number of achievements, but the government has control over the reregulations and therefore the possibility of drafting ambiguous formulas, with several interpretations, again to the detriment of the victims”, he warns. On the bench of the government, the Minister responsible for the Digital Transition, Jean-Noël Barrot, recalled Thursday that an upcoming circular would allow “to increase the number by 20%” compensated victims. For Mohammed Benyahia, it would still be “very insufficient to respond to the unprecedented disaster of the summer of 2022 and the summers to come”.

A climate-proof diet

Because global warming and its consequences are already putting the “Cat-Nat” regime to the test. According to a study by the Federation of Insurers, drought cost 16 billion euros between 1989 and 2021 and the bill could rise to 43 billion for the period 2020-2050. The damage to buildings caused by the episodes observed in France last summer should cost between 1.6 and 2.4 billion euros for insurers, ranking 2022 at the top of the most expensive years for this type of event, ahead of 2003 and its 2.12 billion euros pumped by the drought. “And who knows what 2023 has in store, as we emerge from a record-breaking winter drought?”asks Mohamed Benyahia.

Less spectacular than the floods that devastate entire towns or the storms that sweep away roofs, the RGA requires rethinking the functioning of the natural disaster regime as quickly as possible. “Despite the poor handling of claims, both quantitatively and qualitatively, drought-related expenses have increased sharply since 2016. The resources of the ‘Cat-Nat’ scheme are no longer sufficient to cope with the increase in loss ratio, which could lead to a recurrent intervention of the State which would mark the failure of the ‘Cat-Nat’ regime”, write MPs Sandrine Rousseau and Sandra Marsaud in their report.

another report (PDF document)signed by Senator Les Républicains Christine Lavarde, analysis of avenues for reform, before concluding: “I have to admit my frustration, because I didn’t found an optimal solution to guarantee the long-term sustainability of the ‘Cat-Nat’ regime.” As for the government, represented Thursday in the hemicycle by Jean-Noël Barrot, it recognizes a regime “improvable”. “Two implementing decrees in the Council of State are currently in preparation” to improve the situation, assured the minister.

The tree that hides the forest

Mohamed Benyahia had his house built in 2005. “In 2019, the expert told me that I had to move, that I leave the place”, he confides. If he does not wish to dwell on his personal case, he illustrates in spite of himself the absence of a solution brought to these first waves of victims of the RGA. While walking in the pretty streets of Mézières-sur-Ponthoin, Véronique Portier does not take her eyes off the facades. “This one wasn’t there the last time”she exclaims, taking out her phone, “to document the evolution of cracks”. This other building, striped from the windows to the roof, as around the front door, “was redone 7 years ago”, she continues. Even the post office, the bakery and the tobacconist pass through it.

Opposite her home, she anxiously scrutinizes the construction of a small housing estate. Under the Elan law, adopted in 2018, a soil diagnosis was carried out before the start of construction and the foundations reinforced by five rows of concrete blocks. If the future occupants can hope to escape the fate of their neighbor, no one seems quite ready to face the difficulties which are announced with the explosion of the cases of RGA houses, regrets the geographer Magali Reghezza, specialist in adaptation to the climate change. “The question of compensation is a bit like the first problem that appears, the tree that hides the forest”, she raises. By the failure of the system now denounced by the victims, the subject questions the resilience of the State in the face of disasters of such magnitude that they cannot be borne by private insurance players, unless further exclude the most vulnerable, explains the geographer, member of the High Council for the Climate.

“Behind this question of the RGA, there are enormous losses for people and therefore the risk of an impoverishment of a whole section of society, not to mention the associated psychological risks which will also weigh on public finances”, continues the expert. Because the issues raised by these disasters are immense: rehousing, destruction of uninhabitable houses, depollution of sites, recycling of materials, displacement of populations, activities… All this, not to mention the impacts of RGA on municipalities when roads, buildings public, pipelines and train lines will be affected in turn. “It’s dizzying in reality”, concedes Magali Reghezza. The responses of the public authorities, “always in a reactive logic”, are not “dimensioned to the crisis”, she continues. The victims will all say it: a small crack can presage a big uproar.