Flood victims homeless in winter

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/01/2012 (5386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. LAZARE — Fabien Leclair has spent the coldest nights of this winter sleeping in his car, a few metres away from a five-bedroom home with a massive south-facing sunroom in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

Leclair has been told he can’t be in the mould-infested home for health reasons, so he’s living in a small, unheated trailer in the yard. Small portable heaters don’t do much for the tiny trailer once the temperature dips too low, however, and that’s when Leclair spends the night in his car.

The province has told Leclair his home — where water still sits in the basement, and together with mould has turned the basement into a mucky mess — is uninhabitable. And while the house is a writeoff, government officials tell Leclair the program intended to help flood victims doesn’t apply to him because his house had a “pre-existing condition,” because of the way it was built 45 years ago. Leclair said the house hasn’t had water in the basement for 45 years, however.

He was living in a local motel, paid for with flood assistance, until the funding was cut off Oct. 31. “They said that’s it,” said Leclair. “They tell me they spent more than the value of my house on my mom, my sister and me already, so I was out in the cold.”

Other St. Lazare flood victims tell stories of officials coming more than once to collect the same information, and then saying they have lost the files. They tell of one official saying something will be covered and another saying it won’t.

One homeowner has been told there’s a cheque sitting on a desk in Winnipeg, and the area MLA has called various officials trying to track down that cheque. A handful of homes outside the protective dike that protects the village of St. Lazare itself are still empty — except for mud, mould, and memories — and the homeowners have yet to be compensated for the losses.

PC MLA Leanne Rowat (Riding Mountain) feels the problem might be that unprepared officials were sent out to meet with homeowners with no guidelines to go by, in an effort to make it look like something was being done before Manitoba’s provincial election, or that officials are stalling for time, since the province budgeted $400 million to deal with flooding and the price tag looks like it will be closer to $1 billion.

Rowat told local flood victims at a meeting in St. Lazare Monday the government sent unprepared officials to meet with flood victims. “From my understanding, people were told, ‘Go out and meet with the people who were affected,’ but were really not given a tool kit to deal with the situation at hand.”

Whatever the reason, St. Lazare flood victims are still awaiting compensation.

“The water started coming in May 1, and we got an evacuation notice,” Leclair said of his home west of St. Lazare, where he lived with his mother and sister.

“We all lived together in this house. My mom lived here for 45 years. She raised her family here, had foster kids here, had renters here. It was dry for 45 years, until the flood came. The water from across the road seeped underneath the road to our house. The pressure from the water pushed the basement floor up and the water came in.”

When the weather gets to -30 C, as it was last week, Leclair sleeps in his car. “I can’t afford to heat the trailer,” he says. “I live on a disability pension and my hydro bill is going to be $500 this month.” He said the car is surprisingly comfortable with the help of a portable heater.

“I put the seat back,” he said. “It lays right back. You have to keep the window open. That little 1,500-watt heater makes it really hot.”

 

— The World-Spectator (Moosomin, Sask.)