When Marie-Adeline Daumas finally received the keys to a social housing unit located behind the station in the centre of Nice, she found it hard to believe. “I told myself: finally the mess is over”“It was a bright apartment with two bedrooms, one for each child,” explains the single mother of two. “I was supposed to sleep in the living room, but I didn’t.” “it is not very expensive to pay” for new housing in a recently delivered building. “I was delighted”But from the first summer, in 2023, the little T3 is overheating. In her son’s room, Marie-Adeline Daumas records more than 29 degrees. Every morning, the children leave sweat stains on their mattresses and leave the open-air centre surrounded by people. Summer 2024, “It was even worse.”
Between July and early September, Nice was stifled for more than sixty days. During the day, the 32°C thermometer could correspond to a feeling of 40°C due to the humidity. The valley bottoms, normally cooler, also reached abnormally high temperatures: up to 36°C. The water on the beaches was close to 30°C. At night, the urban materials released the accumulated heat, between the walls and the overheated sea, making it impossible for the city to cool down. Result: a series of sixty-one nights called “tropical” in a row.
Marie-Adeline Daumas’ building includes private and social housing. In the small alley there are two entrances: A serves the private lots, B the social housing. In building A, air conditioners are installed. In B, with the courtyard acting as a heat sink and the roof windows exposed to the sun, it is impossible to breathe.
Marie-Adeline Daumas, exhausted, had to flee with her mother, who lives in an old building. “thick walls” in the city center. There, at least, you can open the shutters and create a draft. Tried to call the owner, Unicil, but in vain. Contacted, the latter did not want to answer questions World. “We live in conditions where we are not respected as humanssays Marie-Adeline Daumas, her voice tearful. I’d like the owners to come and spend a week with me in the summer. Let me take their cabin and let them move in with me. I’ll leave them the keys. Maybe we can talk later. »
Heat imbalances
The entire Mediterranean basin is experiencing a dynamic of faster warming than the rest of the European continent, as the European Commission recalled in February. And cities are even more vulnerable to the phenomenon due to the artificialisation of the soil.
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