‘There was no better Christmas gift’: Construction begins to replace house
For Karalee Shaw Plourde and her daughters Kiersten and Kaylee, the best part of Christmas was the view out of their window.
Just four days before, a volunteer crew from the Mennonite Disaster Service began construction on a new house to replace the home that was demolished last month, a victim of the floods that rolled into Constance Bay in May.
The team made quick work of the framing. By Christmas Day, the shell of a new house was already standing.
“There was no better Christmas gift,” said Plourde.
With a short break for the holidays, construction has resumed, even though Thursday began with bone-chilling temperatures of -27 C.
In 2016, Plourde scraped together a down payment and bought her modest frame house near the Ottawa River. When the tide of water rushed across lawns last spring, her house did not have to be sandbagged, but the damage was more insidious. Within days, water was bubbling up through the foundation as aquifers shifted, eventually pushing the entire house off kilter.
Between the structural damage and the black mould that proliferated in the basement, Plourde and her daughters were forced to vacate in July and rent a neighbouring house. She has received no insurance compensation.
Still, Plourde considers herself lucky. Dozens of people have volunteered to help or offered materials for free or at cost.
“Constance Bay has been amazing. People come to my door with food. There are so many people helping,” she said.
But even with all of the help, the new house is not yet a happily-ever-after. Plourde is still carrying a mortgage on the house that was demolished and struggles to keep costs down on the new construction in the hopes that the project will fit within the provincial parameters for disaster funding.
Two houses in Constance Bay have had to be demolished and are now being rebuilt. Under the provincial rules, Ontario pays a maximum of 90 per cent of the costs of rebuilding. But sometimes it’s far less. It cost more than $25,000 to replace the septic system, for example, but Plourde was refunded only 60 per cent of that cost.
Plourde’s old house was about 1,600 square feet. She downsized to 1,250 square feet in the hopes she will have enough funding to finish the project. There were also expenses that had to be covered before a shovel could even hit the ground, including a survey, new well and demolition. Even though the Mennonites are providing framing and finishing carpentry work, she will still have to hire plumbing and electrical contractors.
“You usually don’t have to demolish a house before you build,” said Len Russell, director of flood relief for the Constance and Buckham’s Bay Community Association. (The association is still accepting donations. To contribute, visit cbbca.ca and click on “flood relief.”)
There’s also a provincial cap on total eligible expenses. The goal is to keep the cost of building a house to under $275,000, said Russell. “The Mennonites have gotten us down to $275,000. We hope.”
Plourde’s work as a graphic designer has ground to a halt because she is managing the construction project herself, learning as she goes. While the footings of the new house were drying, she had to scramble to cover them with blankets and coats to prevent the concrete from being damaged by the cold. It’s not just the job of acquiring a generator for the building site, but figuring out how to keep it going.
Plourde said she can only submit her expenses to the province and keep her fingers crossed.
“It would be nice to rebuild and to know all the answers. We still don’t know what the caps are. It’s scary. One of the questions is whether construction will grind to a halt when I run out of money. The fear of not knowing is the worst.”
Provincial disaster relief funding has been far from a free ride for homeowners, said Russell. The program only works for those who can afford to wait to be compensated, and for those who aren’t fully mortgaged, he said.
“Everyone assumes that everyone gets taken care of. It’s surprising how it doesn’t work that way. The process is full of holes. We had hundreds of destroyed basements in the flooding. We had seniors who could have watched the mould growing in their basements while they waited for a cheque to show up. It’s a little troubling. If you’re not able-bodied and financially stable, then you’re in trouble.”
Meanwhile, the community continues to pitch in, said Russell. The volunteer work crew sleeps and eats in a cottage across the street from the construction site, but there have been as many as 10 volunteers at a time, some from as far away as New Liskeard. When there are too many workers for the cottage, the crew sleeps on air mattresses in the community centre.
Luke Martin, one of the volunteers, lives in Beachburg, near Cobden. Mennonite Disaster Service sends volunteers across North America. Martin has worked in disaster relief in Florida, Louisiana, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York in 2012 and a forest fire in California.
“We’re not doing this because we’re Mennonites. It’s something that people do,” he said. “People have hearts everywhere you go.”