Affordable Housing...stop the insanity

Ward 13 · Accountability Ledger

The Hotel Ledger: What $29 Million a Year Buys — and Doesn't

Ottawa's homelessness budget keeps flowing into motel rooms. A look at why the expense/asset line, not the non-profit/for-profit label, is the number that actually explains why housing stays unaffordable in Rideau-Rockcliffe and across the city.

PETER KARWACKI WARD 13 CANDIDATE JULY 2026

A city can spend money two ways: as an expense that disappears, or as an investment that remains an asset. Ottawa's homelessness spending is a case study in the difference — and it explains, better than any abstract debate about margins, why the delivery model behind a housing unit matters as much as the unit itself.

01 The expense

In 2025, the City of Ottawa spent roughly $29.3 million housing homeless families in hotels and motels. That's not a one-time cost — it recurs every year the underlying shortage persists. Families placed this way stayed in shelter an average of 11 months, and about three in four were in overflow hotel and motel rooms rather than a dedicated shelter facility.

600+families in Ottawa's shelter system last year

11 moaverage family stay in shelter

76%of families in hotel/motel overflow, not dedicated shelter

16,000+households on the social housing waitlist, end of 2025

02 The asset

Compare that recurring bill to a single capital decision the City made this year: buying a vacant downtown hotel at 377 O'Connor St. for $45 million — with the federal government covering most of the cost — to convert into permanent transitional housing. It is, city staff said plainly, a better use of a building than parking families in motel rooms indefinitely.

Put those two numbers side by side and the ledger logic writes itself: at roughly $29 million a year, the City's motel spending would buy the equivalent of an O'Connor-St-sized asset every 18 months — except it buys nothing that lasts. One is an expense line. The other is a capital line. Only one of them still exists in five years.

Fig. 1 — Annual expense vs. one-time capital asset

2025 hotel/motel placements (recurring, annual)$29.3M / yr

377 O'Connor St. purchase (one-time, permanent asset)$45.0M once

Years of hotel spend to equal one asset purchase≈ 1.5 yrs

03 Why the delivery model is the actual variable

This is where the non-profit vs. for-profit distinction earns its place, rather than being a slogan. A for-profit developer's project has to clear a required return before it gets built at all — that return comes out of rent, permanently. A non-profit or co-op provider's project only has to cover its debt service, operating costs, and reserve fund. Break-even, not return-on-equity. That's the entire reason rent-geared-to-income housing — capped at 30% of a household's income — exists almost exclusively in the non-profit, co-op, and public sector in this city: no for-profit landlord will run a unit at a permanent loss relative to market rent.

The motel bill isn't a failure of the private market to be generous. It's what happens when a city relies on emergency, market-rate purchasing instead of financing the non-profit and public stock that doesn't need a margin to operate.

04 The supply gap behind the bill

The deeper problem is that Ottawa isn't building permanent stock fast enough to stop needing motels in the first place. The city's target was 5,000 new affordable units between 2021 and 2030. In the first three years, 466 were completed. The city's own auditor general estimated it would take roughly $188.4 million in additional city investment and another $376.7 million in federal and provincial funding to close that gap — money that competes, year over year, with the same budget paying the hotel bill.

Fig. 2 — 2021–2030 affordable housing target vs. units delivered so far

05 What this means for Ward 13

Rideau-Rockcliffe residents who list housing affordability as a top concern are, in effect, pointing at this same ledger. The fix isn't a slogan about "non-profits vs. developers" — it's structural: capital committed early enough, and predictably enough, that non-profit and co-op providers can secure their financing before a family spends another eleven months in a hotel room the city is paying for by the night. That's an accountability question, not just a compassion question — and it belongs in how this ward's councillor scrutinizes the housing capital budget every single year.

References

1. City of Ottawa. "New strategy helps families experiencing homelessness move more quickly into stable housing." Ottawa.ca newsroom, 2026. ottawa.ca
2. CBC News. "This single mom and her family have been living in Ottawa hotels for over a year." May 2026. cbc.ca
3. CBC News. "City forges new plan to house Ottawa's homeless families." April 22, 2026. cbc.ca
4. CBC News. "City poised to buy vacant downtown hotel to house families." Feb–March 2026. cbc.ca
5. City of Ottawa. "Facts at a glance — Subsidized housing." ottawa.ca
6. Ottawa Citizen (Pressreader). "The Affordable Housing Conundrum." March 30, 2024. pressreader.com
7. City of Ottawa. "Programs and incentives — Building affordable and supportive housing." ottawa.ca

Peter Karwacki for Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe) · peterkarwacki.blogspot.com

Rideau-Rockcliffe Clearance is not tight and severity is up

click on charts

Public data is something worth reading carefully and connecting it to actual governance during election cycles.

It becomes harder to dismiss and more useful for residents who actually live with the numbers. Robbery volume fell 39% while clearance halved - this is an illustration of the capacity problem.

Ward 13 · Rideau-Rockcliffe — Field Notes Read the fine print

The Crime Stats Nobody Reads
(And What They're Actually Hiding)

Ottawa Police quietly drops a "Crime Trends" dashboard for every ward each spring. It's built for city hall, not for you. Here's the version with the headlines nobody wrote.

Every spring, Ottawa Police publishes a Crime Trends report for each ward — rows of rates and clearance percentages that read like a tax form. Which is exactly why nobody looks closely enough to notice what it actually says about Rideau-Rockcliffe. So I did.

The number everyone will quote Headline

Crime in Rideau-Rockcliffe rose 9.0% in 2025. That's the number that'll show up in a press release or a doorstep conversation. It's also the least interesting number in the report.

The number nobody will quote Buried

42.4% → 20.0% Robbery clearance rate, cut in half in a single year.

Not "robbery went up" — it actually fell 39%, down to 20 cases. What collapsed is our ability to solve the ones that still happen. Same story with assault: clearance down from 54.0% to 48.7%. Violent crime overall dropped 6.4% in raw terms — genuinely good news — while our capacity to clear the violent crimes that remain got measurably worse.

That's not a "more crime" story. That's a capacity story. And capacity is a council-level, budget-level, oversight-level question — exactly the kind of question Rideau-Rockcliffe hasn't been asking loudly enough.

Clearance rate — 2024 vs 2025

So where's the 9% actually coming from? Trace it

Not from violence. It's coming from two places, and neither is what you'd guess from the headline.

+27.6% 907 vs 707 cases
Clearance: just 9.9%

+12.4% 317 vs 282 cases
Clearance: just 5.0%

+54.7% 99 vs 64 cases
Failure to Comply w/ Order

Theft under $5,000 is the single largest driver of the entire increase — bike thefts, package thefts, scams — and it's the crime category solved least often. Fraud is close behind, solved barely one time in twenty. Meanwhile "Other Criminal Code" offences are up 34.1%, driven almost entirely by Failure to Comply with a Court Order and Breach of Probation — not new crimes on our streets, but the justice system's own machinery grinding on people already inside it.

The chart that should worry you more than the headline 5-year view

Ottawa Police also publish a five-year Crime Severity Index for the ward. It sat basically flat from 2021 to 2023, ticked up gently into 2024 — and then jumped 11% in a single year to 82.68. Severity isn't volume; it's a measure of how serious the offences are getting. A line that goes from flat to a hockey stick in its final year belongs on a council agenda, not buried on page two of a PDF.

Crime Severity Index, 2021 – 2025

Where this connects to how the ward is governed Accountability

We already know the Ottawa Police Services Board's own Chief admitted its database-misuse auditing isn't "robust." We already know the Board's safe-workplace budget was cut from $8.2M to $5.4M since 2022. We already know Rawlson King sat on that Board and resigned in 2022 vouching for its competence — before the Auditor General found it had been reporting inaccurately.

None of that is a coincidence sitting next to a ward where violent-crime clearance is falling and property-crime clearance is in single digits.

Oversight isn't an abstract governance word. It's the difference between a robbery getting solved four times out of ten versus two times out of ten. That's not a statistic — that's someone's stolen car, someone's break-in, sitting open.

What actually needs to happen The ask

Not more press releases about "crime being up." A ward councillor who treats a 9.9% property-crime clearance rate as an actual problem to solve — pushing for resourcing tied to outcomes, not just calls answered. Take a Board seat the incumbent no longer holds...because he quit.

The data's public. It's just never been read out loud. So, how will Rideau-Rockcliffe’s clearance rates be tracked and improved in 2026–27? If you want improvements... I am your man!

Source: Ottawa Police Service, Ward – Rideau-Rockcliffe Crime Trends report, 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31 (data as of April 30, 2026).

References / Sources

• Ottawa Police Service – Crime Trends by City Ward (interactive dashboard; primary source for 2024–2025 Ward 13 figures, clearance rates, and Crime Severity Index)
• Ottawa Police Community Safety Data Portal
• CTV News Ottawa – Crime rates by ward in 2025 (confirms ~9% rise in Rideau-Rockcliffe rate)
• Ottawa Citizen – Ottawa crime rates increase in 2025
• CBC News – Ottawa police clearance rate dropping
• CBC News – Auditor General audit on OPS project budgets and reporting (May 2026)
• CBC News – Police board meeting on database misuse auditing and workplace safety (June 2026; Chief’s “not robust” comment)
• Ottawa Citizen – Rawlson King resignation from Police Services Board (2022)
• Ottawa Police – Sample Ward 13 Crime Trends PDF (methodology reference; earlier years)

Pints and a lot more in Manor Park

 

Dial 988

The volunteer for the Canadian Mental Health Association was very interested to learn I had worked with his group as Financial Director for 9 years in Kirkland Lake and that I had been a director on the North Bay Psychiatric Hospital board.

Emergency Contact Numbers

Groovey Shades from Anatomy Physio

I spoke briefly to the organizer, Lana.

"I cannot stay", I said

 "I am here, I spoke to people, I bought stuff"

She seemed happy about that.

On my way home I handed out my cards outside Smashed Buger.

One couple asked...can you speak french.

Bien sûr!

Another asked what I would do differently... he really liked my proposal for a traffic circle at Beechwood and Vanier...people are starting to listen to me Rawlson, win or lose...I hope you will too.

I am a different guy, I'd do things differently, I'd make different decisions.

I AM A Candidate for Rideau-Rockcliffe*

"something needs to be done".

This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely. Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.

Campaign Web Page

https://peterkarwacki.blogspot.com/p/peter-karwacki-for-rideau-rockcliffe.html?m=1#

AI Audits Are Long Overdue

Ottawa Police Board

 

Stubbs told the board that Ottawa police make hundreds of database searches every day and it's tough to keep track of them, and while there is some auditing in place, "it's not robust." To drive home how serious the abuse of police databases is, the force is about to send an email to all of its employees notifying them of increased penalties, Ferguson said.  CbC report

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-workplace-safety-misconduct-board-meeting-9.7244820

 

The Audit Ottawa Police Could Already Have

At Monday's police board meeting — the first held in person in more than three years — Chief Eric Stubbs told the board something worth sitting with. Officers run hundreds of database queries a day, he said, and while some auditing exists, it "isn't robust."

That admission came in direct response to a board inquiry into database misuse, prompted by reports that officers had been searching internal systems to track women they were interested in — pulling license plates outside gyms and coffee shops, then running them through police systems to get names and addresses. Stubbs has to give the board a full answer in July: how misuse gets detected, whether audits are internal or independent, and how much time typically passes between an improper search and anyone noticing.

That last question is the one that should worry people most. Because the honest answer, right now, appears to be: not until someone else complains.

This isn't a hard technical problem

"Not robust" makes database auditing sound like some frontier challenge OPS hasn't caught up to yet. It isn't. Anomaly-detection systems that flag unusual access to sensitive records are mature, off-the-shelf technology. Hospitals have used versions of this for years to catch staff snooping in patient charts they have no clinical reason to view — it's a standard feature of health-records compliance. The pattern-matching involved is not exotic: a query with no linked case file, repeated searches on the same name over time, access clustered around a particular time and place — these are the kinds of signals a modern audit system flags automatically, in real time, rather than waiting for an unrelated complaint to surface it months or years later.

None of this requires OPS to invent anything. It requires deciding that reviewing database access is worth building properly.

Which brings us to the budget

The Ottawa Police Service's safe workplace program — the unit meant to be dealing with exactly this kind of misconduct — had its budget cut from $8.2 million in 2022 to $5.4 million now. That's not a rounding error; it's a third of the funding, gone, in the years leading up to a second wave of the same category of scandal.

You can't credibly tell a board "our auditing isn't robust" while the unit responsible for workplace accountability has been shrinking. Robust auditing costs money and staff time. If the board is serious about the questions it's asking in July, the answer needs to include what it would actually cost to fix — and whether OPS has been asking for that money, or quietly deprioritizing it.

What real accountability looks like from here

The board has apparently ordered quarterly updates going forward, which is a start. But quarterly updates are only accountability if they come with numbers: how many flagged accesses, how many investigated, how long detection is taking, and whether the safe workplace program's budget is actually being restored to do this work properly.

Ottawa doesn't have a technology gap. It has a prioritization gap, and prioritization is a budget decision the board can actually act on — not a technical mystery Stubbs needs another decade to solve.

Watch the debate between King and I on this matter

The Audit Gap: Why "Not Robust" Shouldn't Be Good Enough for OPS

Database-misuse auditing is a solved problem elsewhere. In Ottawa, it's an admission of failure, and a funding choice.

Peter Karwacki — Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe) accountability blog

When Ottawa Police Services leadership was pressed on how well the force audits its own members' access to law enforcement databases, the answer that came back — attributed to Stubbs — was that the auditing process is "not robust." Said plainly, in public, about the systems meant to catch officers misusing confidential databases for personal reasons.

I want to be direct about why that answer doesn't sit well with me. I'm a trained data analyst. Anomaly detection on access logs — flagging unusual query patterns, off-hours lookups, searches on names with no case connection — is not experimental technology. It is a mature, largely off-the-shelf capability that police services elsewhere have implemented specifically because self-reported honesty isn't an oversight system. When an organization with a nine-figure budget tells the public its auditing isn't robust, that's not a technology gap. It's a resourcing and priority choice.

The Ottawa Police Services Board's safe workplace program was funded at $8.2 million when committed in 2022. Current funding sits at $5.4 million. That's the direction spending has moved while the Board was telling the public it took internal accountability seriously.

The resignation that vouched for competence

This is where Rawlson King's record on the Board matters. King sat on the Ottawa Police Services Board and resigned in 2022 — issuing a statement at the time vouching for the Board's competence on his way out the door. Since then: the independent workplace investigations office was quietly closed, the Auditor General found inaccurate reporting to the Board, and this spring brought a documented misconduct crisis.

If I were on that board, I would not have quit. Oversight isn't a role you vouch for and then leave — it's a role you stay in and use.

This fits a pattern I've written about before with King: strong public statements calling for stronger oversight, paired with an actual record of stepping back from the oversight bodies themselves. He never sat on the Transit Commission or Light Rail Subcommittee despite repeated public calls for stronger LRT oversight. He left the Police Services Board with a vote of confidence, shortly before the Board's own record showed that confidence wasn't warranted.

What accountability actually requires

None of this is about painting a technical problem as unsolvable, or an oversight failure as unfixable. It's the opposite. The tools exist. The methodology exists. What's been missing is the funding commitment and the sustained presence of people willing to sit on these bodies and push, rather than issue a statement and step away.

Ward 13 residents deserve representation that treats institutional oversight as ongoing work, not a credential to claim on the way out. That's the standard I'm running on.

I AM A Candidate for Rideau-Rockcliffe*

"something needs to be done".

This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely. Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.

Campaign Web Page

https://peterkarwacki.blogspot.com/p/peter-karwacki-for-rideau-rockcliffe.html?m=1#

Traffic Circles are in our future

This one would cantelever over the water...create a stunning lookout and overlooks on both sides of the bridge. It would include pedestrian underpasses.

There is a typical consultation underway in which you are presented with false alternatives.

Everyone  knows about the inpossible bumper to bumper traffic at Vanier Parkway and Beechwood

 Its also bad at Beechwood and St.Laurent.

My solution. Traffic circles

Candidate for Rideau-Rockcliffe*

something needs to be done".

This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely. Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.

Campaign Web Page

https://peterkarwacki.blogspot.com/p/peter-karwacki-for-rideau-rockcliffe.html?m=1#

For comparison

Trim

Jeanne D'Arc

St. PATRICK  AND  VANIER

Historical Votes in Rideau-Rockcliffe

W13

City of Ottawa — Municipal Council

Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward

Election record, 2000 – 2022 · known as Rideau Ward prior to 2006

2000Rideau Ward

Candidate	Votes	%
Jacques Legendre	7,269	64.07
Richard Cannings	4,077	35.93

2003Rideau Ward

Candidate	Votes	%
Jacques Legendre	6,070	79.17
James Parker	934	12.18
Michel Binda	663	8.65

2006Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward

Candidate	Votes	%
Jacques Legendre	7,450	62.35
Maurice Lamirande	1,953	16.34
James Parker	1,248	10.44
Jules Bouvier	1,077	9.01
Muinis Ramadan	221	1.85

2010Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward

Candidate	Votes	%
Peter D. Clark	2,722	25.84
Maurice Lamirande	1,835	17.42
Sheila Perry	1,709	16.22
Bruce Poulin	1,695	16.09
Richard Cannings	1,333	12.65
Corry Burke	438	4.16
Rawlson King	380	3.61
Pierre Maheu	224	2.13
Harley Collison	129	1.22
James Parker	69	0.66

2014Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward

Candidate	Votes	%
Tobi Nussbaum	4,846	47.19
Peter D. Clark (incumbent)	1,871	18.22
Sheila Perry	1,423	13.86
Penny Thompson	994	9.68
Jevone Nicholas	846	8.24
Cam Holmstrom	290	2.82

2018Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward

Candidate	Votes	%
Tobi Nussbaum	7,334	80.52
Peter Heyck	1,774	19.48

2019Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward By-election

Triggered by Nussbaum's resignation to lead the National Capital Commission. Seventeen candidates on the ballot.

Candidate	Votes	%
Rawlson King	1,529	18.36
Jamie Kwong	1,406	16.88
Penny Thompson	851	10.22
Marc Dorgeville	794	9.53
Sheila Perry	742	8.91
Maurice Lamirande	708	8.50
Johan Hamels	665	7.98
Kasia Adamiec	507	6.09
Chris Penton	441	5.29
Oriana Ngabirano	247	2.97
Patrick Mayangi	135	1.62
Miklos Horvath	89	1.07
Peter Heyck	58	0.70
Peter Jan Karwacki	48	0.58
Jerry Kovacs	46	0.55
Idris Ben-Tahir	35	0.42
Bruce A. Faulkner	29	0.35

2022Rideau–Rockcliffe Ward

Candidate	Votes	%
Rawlson King	8,481	80.14
Clayton Fitzsimmons	859	8.12
Peter Jan Karwacki	716	6.77
Peter Zanette	527	4.98

● denotes winning candidate

Compiled from City of Ottawa election results & contemporaneous reporting

Rideau-Rockcliffe (Ward 13) Voter Turnout

Municipal election turnout, last ~25 years — Ottawa, Ontario

Ward-level turnout (confirmed figures)

Election	Type	Turnout	Detail
2022	General election	39.74%	11,216 of 28,220 eligible voters — up 2.59 pts from 2018
2019	By-election	~30.6–31%	17 candidates on the ballot; lower turnout typical of by-elections
2018	General election	37.15%	Tobi Nussbaum re-elected with 80% of the vote

Citywide turnout (Ottawa-wide) — ward-specific figures not confirmed

Election	Citywide Turnout	Note
2014	39.92%	—
2010	~44%	Down ~10 pts from 2006
2006	~54%	Implied from the 2010 "-10pp" figure
2003	Not found	Not confirmed in available sources
2000	Not found	Not confirmed in available sources

Caveat: Ward-level (rather than citywide) turnout figures for 2000, 2003, 2006, and 2010 weren't readily available in the sources searched. Elections Ottawa's archived poll-by-poll PDF results may have this detail for those years if it's needed.

Sources: Elections Ottawa, Wikipedia (2018 & 2022 Ottawa municipal election pages), CBC News, CTV News Ottawa, AMO municipal election statistics.

Vote for Peter Karwacki.

Campaign Web Page

Sumps, Pumps and Valves - a home owner checklist

i

Fridge Copy — Keep Handy Before the Next Storm

Flood-Ready
Checklist

What every Ottawa homeowner can control before the water rises

01 Backflow & Pumps

• Backwater valve installed and tested — not just installed onceCheck it opens/closes freely each spring
• Sump pump installed and running
• Battery or water-powered backup for the sump pumpPower usually fails exactly when you need it most
• High-water alarm in placeCatches a failure before it becomes a flood

02 Grading & Drainage

• Downspouts redirected away from the foundation
• Ground graded so water flows away from the house
• Gutters cleared of debris
• Window wells covered and clear

03 Foundation & Systems

• Weeping tile disconnected from the sanitary sewerCommon in older homes — overwhelms the system in heavy rain
• Foundation cracks sealed
• Furnace, water heater & electrical panel raised above known flood lineIf the basement has flooded before

04 Before the Storm

• Know where your main shutoffs are
• Watch the forecast — have a plan before, not during
• Photograph your basement contents for insuranceDo this now, not after
• Confirm you have a sewer backup insurance riderMost policies don't include it automatically

City & provincial help exists — but check eligibility first. RPPP rebates backwater valves & sump pumps (generally pre-2004/2012 homes only). Rain Ready Ottawa rebates downspouts & soakaway pits (Priority Retrofit Areas only). DRAO is open for the July 1 storm, deadline Nov 16, 2026.

Ward 13 · Rideau-Rockcliffe peterkarwacki.blogspot.com

# Sumps, Pumps, and Valves:
What You Can Do While the City Figures Out What It's Doing

The July 1 storm dumped up to 167 millimetres of rain on parts of Ottawa in a few hours — a one-in-200-year event by the City's own account. More than 6,000 basement floods were reported. Over 30,000 residents lost power. Roughly 100 people were displaced from their homes. In Ward 13, the combined sewer sections running through West Rockcliffe and Manor Park sit right at the intersection of two long-standing risk factors: aging infrastructure that predates modern separated storm and sanitary systems, and a river corridor already under strain from the objectives in the Ottawa River Action Plan.


Council responded on July 15 with a package of unanimous motions: waived building permit fees for flood-related repairs, waived encroachment fees for storm-debris containers, an expanded Compassionate Grant program, and an expanded Residential Protective Plumbing Program (RPPP). That's a reasonable emergency response, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But "expand the program" is doing a lot of quiet work in that sentence, and residents deciding what to do with a wet basement this week don't have time to wait for staff to define what it actually means.


The catch nobody's advertising The RPPP subsidizes backwater valves and sump pumps for homeowners — but only for new installations. Read the fine print and you'll find a line that hasn't changed in any of the July 15 announcements: rebates are **not available for maintenance, repair, or replacement of existing protective plumbing devices.**


That matters most in exactly the neighbourhoods where it should matter least. A lot of the older housing stock in West Rockcliffe and Manor Park already has some form of backwater protection — installed decades ago, sized for a rainfall regime that no longer describes what actually falls on this city. Those homeowners did the responsible thing years before anyone was talking about "extreme weather events" as a monthly occurrence. Under the current rules, that responsible choice is precisely what disqualifies them from help now. The program is built to reward the first move, not to fund catching up when the first move is no longer good enough.


If council's expansion doesn't specifically address the repair-and-replacement gap, it isn't closing the hole that failed thousands of basements on July 1 — it's widening eligibility around it.


## What you can actually do this week You don't need to wait for city hall to sort out the fine print to reduce your own risk. None of this is exotic; most of it is maintenance most homeowners have simply never been prompted to think about.


**Backwater valve (backflow prevention).** This is the single device that stops sewage or storm water from surging back up through your pipes when the municipal system is overwhelmed. If you don't have one, it's the first thing to look into — indoor sanitary valves and outdoor storm valves have different eligibility rules under RPPP, so check both.


**Sump pump with battery backup.** A sump pump that only runs on grid power is a sump pump that fails during the exact kind of storm that also knocks out power to 30,000 homes. Battery backup isn't optional anymore — it's the difference between a dry basement and a flooded one during the outage that comes with the storm.


**Weeping tile disconnection.** If your foundation drainage still ties into the municipal sewer rather than draining to a sump pit, you're feeding your own basement's water — and your neighbours' — into a system that's already over capacity in a surcharge event.


**Downspouts and grading.** Redirecting downspouts away from your foundation and disconnecting them from the storm or combined sewer is free, takes an afternoon, and is now a documented eligibility requirement for the Compassionate Grant under the Rain Ready Ottawa program. Check that your lot still slopes away from the house — settling over decades can quietly reverse this.


**Foundation maintenance.** Cracks and gaps are entry points. A basic annual inspection catches small problems before a 118mm rain event turns them into expensive ones.


**Utility elevation.** If you're rebuilding after this storm, or renovating anyway, elevating furnaces, water heaters, and electrical panels above expected flood lines is cheap insurance against the next event costing you your mechanicals a second time.


## The paperwork, briefly - **Report to 311 immediately** — this starts the clock for the Compassionate Grant, and the City has extended the reporting window from one to three months for the July 1 event specifically.

- **File your insurance claim first** — DRAO (the province's disaster assistance program) deducts insurance proceeds from what it will cover, so your claim outcome shapes everything downstream.

- **Keep every receipt and photo.** Reimbursement runs entirely on paper trail. - **Apply for RPPP participation** if you're installing new protective plumbing — it's also now a documented input to a stronger Compassionate Grant application. ## Why this is on a campaign blog and not just a homeowner's checklist

I write about capital projects, transit oversight, and council votes because the pattern is always the same: the city is fluent in announcing "support" and much less fluent in defining who it actually reaches. An expanded program that still excludes repair and replacement isn't a technicality — it's a policy choice that will quietly determine which of your neighbours get help and which don't, and nobody voted on that distinction out loud.

Residents shouldn't need to become forensic readers of program eligibility criteria to find out whether the city's flood response actually applies to their street. That's not a rain problem. That's an infrastructure and communication problem, and it's the kind of thing I think Ward 13 deserves a councillor who tracks closely enough to flag before residents find out the hard way — with a wet basement and a rejected application.