Caring about Urban Flooding
A month ago, I didn’t know what a weeping tile was. Now, all I want to do is talk about that and urban flooding.
I briefly wrote in my last post that our group is working on an advocacy strategy to reduce urban flood risks in Toronto, particularly in regards to basement flooding. In Canada, basement flooding is the largest source of home insurance claims and there are $1.8 billion in insured losses every year for water damage. The City of Toronto currently has a voluntary subsidy program for homeowners to flood-proof their basements, providing up to $3,400 estimated to cover up to 80% of total costs. However, only 2% (through our own calculations and a forthcoming report by a think tank) of all homes have actually taken up the subsidy.
So, our initial hunch was that this program needs to be expanded to 100% coverage, in particular for low-income households, who may be most affected in event of an extreme rainfall. During our research, however, we came across the incredible work that non-profits are already doing to reduce flood risks, such as the ongoing work of RAIN Community Solutions, construction of rain gardens in City of Mississauga, creation of neighbourhood resilience maps in Toronto, and implementation of a stormwater tech pilot in Collingwood.
As we move forward with our final report, one challenge I’ve been grappling with is that advocating for one solution could take precious resource away from other solutions. And of course, no one solution will work on its own, but isn’t a focused advocacy strategy a strong one?
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During our journey, we were also lucky to be connected to a few experts in the water sector. A conversation last week further built upon a suspicion that was budding- that there’s great cynicism around voluntary subsidy programs. Example: the City of London tried to get a neighbourhood that had been repeatedly flooded to get flood-proofed. The City offered 100% coverage and saw little uptake. Then the City decided to add on an additional $1,000 cheque to get more homeowners on board- finally, that increased to uptake to still just over 50%.
Low uptake is a problem. If you get your basement flood-proofed and disconnect your excess contributions to the sanitary and stormwater system, but your neighbour upstream doesn’t because they’ve never been flooded, then they’re still going to over contribute to the system and get your basement flooded.
So if not voluntary, then what? While voluntary hasn’t been working, mandatory programs have shown to have more potential to be effective. But with mandatory programs, we have to make sure there’s municipal capacity to enforce policies.
So what if we didn’t need to get to this stage at all? Working backwards, ensuring that building codes and standards are up to speed, the quality of construction meet those standards, are all ways to prevent the need for retrofit in the first place. But, we still have to do something about the homes that have already been built.
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Getting back to our solution… part of increasing uptake and participation in retrofitting is to counter community apathy when it comes to flooding. But, how can we understand the why behind the apathy in our classroom, when most of us are not even homeowners nor live in the community we’re designing a solution for? We’ve started thinking about why retrofits for a basement could be annoying- there’s the inconvenience of it, being home while your yard is being dug up, maybe the contractor can’t find where your downspout is connected to the sewer, or the noise, or the mess.
Instead of advocating for one fixed solution, our strategy now is centered on going out to the community and homeowners to understand their needs, fears, desires, and co-design a solution that is truly for the homeowner and community. We can never really know until we ask and listen. Perhaps a guiding question could be…
