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'Hayride through hell' for Widewater family
Joe McWilliams
Lakeside Leader
Last September, Dean Thompson and his family were looking forward to having a new house on their property in Widewater. On their lot carved out of a mature forest the foundation was ready – made to fit the particular house they were buying and having trucked up from Edmonton.
The house never made it.
“It got hit,” he says. “Totaled.”
That was bad enough. What followed wasn’t any fun either and it continues.
“The guy who was bringing the house up had only $100,000 insurance,” Thompson says. “Not enough to cover the replacement value of the house.”
Not nearly enough, as it happens. Thompson says he paid about $220,000 for it, but to replace it now would cost even more. Not only that, but the $40,000 he spent on a basement fitted exactly to that house leaves him with a foundation that not just any house will sit on.
“It’s not just a generic foundation,” he says. “I’m SOL as far as putting any other house on there.”
The family of five are living in a rig trailer, after spending some time in hotels last fall. They’d been living in a travel trailer over the summer, but that was too cramped and wouldn’t have been any good for the winter anyway. They racked up some hotel bills in the weeks right after the house got hit. Thompson doesn’t know if he’ll see that money again, not to mention he money he spent putting a temporary roof on his basement foundation, to keep it warm.
The rig trailer is warm and dry, but it only has two bedrooms and isn’t good enough.
“All the little things people take for granted we miss,” he says.
The matter of compensation for the wrecked house is in the hands of the legal system. It’s been going on for eight months, and Thompson doesn’t seem confident it will be settled any time soon. Even if he wins the case.
“You can have a judgment against somebody, but then there’s the matter of collecting. I don’t know how easy it’s going to be to collect. How long is it going to be? Five years? Seven years?
Meanwhile, the foundation that should have been the Thompson home sits wrapped in tarpaulins surrounded by rough ground that can’t be landscaped. Thompson says it’s tough for his wife and kids having to live in such uncomfortable conditions and it doesn’t help that no end is in sight.
“This whole ordeal has just been a hayride through hell,” he says.
The only mitigating factor, Thompson says, has been the help offered by neighbours, either of equipment or just a sympathetic ear.
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