City plans to offer rebates to help Calgary homeowners install hail-resistant roofs
Program would give $2,000 rebates to offset cost of more resilient roofing products
The city is looking at putting money into a roof rebate program in order to help reduce the number of houses suffering damage during major hailstorms.
Council's finance committee gave its approval on Tuesday to a program that would see a limited number of $2,000 rebates go to homeowners who install more durable roofing material.
The news comes several months after thousands of houses in northeast Calgary were damaged by a major hailstorm — making it one of the costliest natural disasters in Canadian history.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi says the city's goal is to help reduce damage caused by hail in order to help the community.
"A $2,000 grant for example isn't going to get you a new roof but it might help offset the cost of building something that's more resilient," he said.
Coun. George Chahal says reducing the damage from future storms would cut down on insurance claims and the environmental cost of replacing roofing materials.
"This is an opportunity for the city to support residents with a grant program to ensure we can get more resilient roofing products installed without impacting housing affordability," he said at the council meeting.
He says $800 million was spent to replace damaged roofing materials after last summer's storm, as well as damage that occurred within the houses.
"This is the only part of Canada that faces these extreme weather patterns when it comes to hail and the Institute of Catastrophic Losses has indicated the one thing we can do to ensure that these huge insurance losses do not continue to occur are to have a better, resilient roofing product."
Council has assembled $1 million for the program but details won't be ready until next month.
The city also plans to ask the province if it's willing to contribute to the program in order to help more homeowners.
"I'm hoping that the provincial government sees the urgency of this initiative and would also come forward and support it through tax incentives or credits or a similar rebate program," said Chahal.
With files from Scott Dippel