It was the place where Marie Le Mélédo had imagined growing old with her cats: a cozy studio overlooking a patch of greenery, in a quiet courtyard in Les Lilas, an eastern Paris suburb. She had it completely renovated, decorating it with brightly-colored furniture to flood it with light. But when she returned from vacation in the summer of 2020, Le Mélédo found her apartment had been destroyed. The doors and windows wouldn't open, the floor had sunk, and multiple cracks scarred the walls. The building was quickly classified as hazardous. After the "panic" there was "hell," recounted the 37-year-old agroecology expert, pointing to the crowbar she had to use to enter and exit her home and the props supporting the ceiling.

It took several years of procedures, studies, and thousands of euros spent by the condo owners for the insurance company – who initially refused – to acknowledge the cause of the damage: the shrinkage and swelling of the clay in the soil, ground movements that were accentuated by the succession of droughts and rains, aggravated by global warming. "I spent my evenings and weekends on it, without help, and it kept me up at night. It turns your life upside down," she said. For two years, she had to find alternative housing, costing her €700 a month on top of the €1,200 in loan repayments. Although the insurance eventually granted €380,000 for repairs, the work has yet to begin.

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