Expropriated from his property following a flood, he waited 22 years for his house in Sommières to be demolished

In 2002 the ground floor was underwater: the large building will be demolished. Free Midday

Located along the Montpellier road, the large building which suffered the 2002 flood will be destroyed. And its owner should finally receive the money from the expropriation, managed by the State.

When he heard the government's promises to the victims of Pas-de-Calais, the blood of Alain Sutra-Fourcade did nothing but #39;a ride. "The state is telling people whose homes have been flooded, we are going to buy your property, it will go quickly, don't worry. Very good, I am for the principle of shaving straight away. But I just want to testify that, for me, it took… 22 years!" 

The one who lives today in Bagnols and has run the real estate company (SCI) which managed this beautiful house in Somme, since the death of his mother, has just received the notification state services. The money from the expropriation will be paid into his lawyer's bank account, he will have one month to empty the premises and the demolition can begin. 

Water up to the ceiling of the ground floor

During the deadly floods of 2002, the family home located along the Salinelles road, this RD 6110 which sees 20,000 vehicles pass per day, received water up to the ceiling of the first level. No casualties but significant damage. And above all the classification of the large building, owned by the family since 1856, in the PPRI red zone as soon as this is established. "My mother receives a first notice of ;expropriation in 2007, five years after the flood. She disputes the amount. Then a second opinion was sent in 2014, she still did not agree. The third notice arrived in 2022.

The house is located along the Salinelles road, on the right bank of the river. Free Midday

The family estimates that the house is worth 1 M€ when the State instead provides the sum of 560,000 €. During all these years of procedure, all improvement work is of course suspended, nor is it, in theory, possible to ;#39;install tenants there…"We of course stopped renting the ground floor, but my mother, who was the same age as the tenants upstairs, n&#39 ;did not want to dislodge them. It was a bit sentimental, but these people had lived here forever…"

"Delays are often very long"

One of the two tenants died in 2015. She had spent her entire adult life here. Alain Sutra-Fourcade cannot re-rent the apartment. The second and last resident, in her nineties, left for a nursing home in 2022. She had lived there for 38 years. 

During all these years, the SCI is no longer really the owner, it is the expropriating authority, that is to say the expropriating authority. #39;State, which is. But it’s Alain Sutra-Fourcade who pays the property tax. "The courts estimated that I was entitled to 8,000 € for this damage, but that does not cover all the costs. And then we are not talking about moral damage…"

Maître Alexia Combe, lawyer, explains it: "In these expropriation cases, the delays are often very long and here, clearly, the reasonable deadline is not respected. But the moral damage of seeing one's property still standing, but deteriorating and the impossibility for the expropriated inhabitants to turn the page, is never taken into account." The opposite would certainly increase the bill considerably.