Identifying the barriers preventing Calgarians from climate-readying their homes

The City of Calgary is encouraging homeowners to complete a survey outlining the barriers they are facing as they prepare their homes for a changing climate.

The City of Calgary wants to help homeowners climate-ready their homes and hopes to learn more about the barriers they face in that endeavour in an online survey.

The city was at the Genesis Centre Saturday to encourage people to fill out the survey.

“We’re talking to people about their experiences with extreme weather events at home,” said Stacey Rector, who leads climate adaptation at the City of Calgary.

“We’d like to understand the challenges opportunities that we might be able to support them with and making further upgrades or modifications to their home to help them be more resilient to future climate events and to protect their well being while they’re at home,” she added.

In the survey, homeowners are asked if they worry their home may be damaged by a storm or flooding sometime during the next 10 years and what improvements people have made to their homes to prevent significant damage and what challenges they face in putting those improvements in place.

This survey was sparked in part by the hail storm last August that damaged thousands of homes in the northeast quadrant of the city.

If you miss the session, representatives from the city will be back at the Genesis Centre next Saturday, January 25 from 10:00 to 12:30 p.m.

If you can’t get to the in-person sessions you can fill out the survey online.

You have until February 18 to participate in the survey, which takes about 15 minutes to complete.

The city hopes that by identifying the obstacles homeowners face --whether they be financial, informational, or practical -- that it will be able to develop solutions to help residents prepare their homes for the changing climate.

The city already has some online tips to prepare against intensifying hail, basement flooding, extreme heat events, and wildfire smoke.

“Calgarians can visit our Climate Ready Home Program to understand the actions that they can take during regular maintenance or renovations to their homes to help them become more resilient to future climate events.,” said Rector.