A Pierrefonds resident whose home was washed out by the floods in May of 2017 is still living in a trailer on his property, waiting for the okay from Quebec to rebuild this home.
André Lavigne has been living at his home on Gouin Blvd. for 32 years before it was rendered uninhabitable by the floods. His neighbors were spared, because they were on slightly higher ground.
He set up a trailer on his property and has been camped out there ever since, unable to go back to his longtime home. Since then, he says his case has been languishing in a Quebec government office somewhere — a bureaucratic nightmare which is keeping the 63-year-old from leading a normal life.
Lavigne tells the Journal de Montréal that last October, he filed the paperwork with the borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro to have his home rebuilt on higher ground, but he found out a short time later that Quebec's Municipal Affairs ministry is ultimately in charge of approving the request.
The paper was told by the ministry that it received Lavigne's paperwork last May, and they transferred it to a committee of independent experts from the Environment ministry, and is unable to move on Lavigne's request until it receives an opinion from the Environment department.
Lavigne says no one from the Environment ministry ever visited the home to size up the job in the months since the dossier fell into its lap.
Meanwhile, Pierrefonds-Roxboro mayor Jim Beis says the situation could have resolved itself last October, since the borough would have approved Lavigne's request. He told the paper Lavigne's being hung out to dry by the government is "completely unacceptable."