U.S. Flood Strategy Shifts to ‘Unavoidable’ Relocation of Entire Neighborhoods

FHA decided way back when to not allow FHA mortgages for houses built in flood plains. This was a good move. You could still get a private mortgage.

However, there are a lot of people living in flood plains, and they got the rule changed to allow FHA mortgages if flood insurance was available. Note that beach front property is in a flood plain, and is often owned by politically powerful people.

However, no insurance company in their right mind would insure a house that is going to flood over and over again.

So, the people in flood prone areas got the federal government to subsidize flood insurance.

Now the federal government is on the hook whenever these houses get flooded. In some cases, houses have been rebuilt many times in the exact same place after being flooded.

Many of these houses are owned by wealthy individuals (who else can afford to buy waterfront property on coasts?)

The solution is just to stop subsidizing flood insurance. It serves no benefit other than to subsidize housing to be built in flood prone areas. If they can't afford the insurance, then too bad for them.

Why is it the government’s job to rebuild or relocate these flood prone areas? Why not create special assessment districts to pay for flood control themselves, devaluing property and discouraging new investment?

It's about time this happened. My step mother worked for FEMA for decades and used to talk about all the wasted money going into rebuilding stuff, they knew would go away. All federally funded.