Home buyers flock to Florida cities devastated by Hurricane Ian
wsj.com
wsj.com
Additionally, people who hand wring about "America doesn't regulate" some thing that 48+ states regulate but isn't federally regulated would be put in the stocks and the townsfolk be provided with quick reference guides for various niche subsets of state law to throw at them.
Red states are self interested and won't say no to handouts as long as they receive them. Blue states believe we're "all in this together". So neither "side" has an incentive to raise the issue. Plus no one wants to be the guy who refused to help that poor down on their luck american who got their house blown away on the TV...
https://publicintegrity.org/environment/government-subsidize...
> Virtually no private market for flood insurance exists for most residential and commercial properties.
While the rest of the country may not want to subsidize coastal FL and TX, I doubt the issue could gain enough political steam to overcome advocates from beneficiaries of NFIP.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/29/554603161/epis...
tl;dl: They are the insurer of last resort. They have paid out 10x the value of some houses that are constantly flooding.
I'm a master of my areas of the federal code, I was not aware of this area!
As any true Scotsman knows.
Everywhere's a disaster zone now, we need to account for that, do our best to warn people, and do our best to help people get back to it. This is true here, and around the globe.
Mass migrations are _destabilizing_. It's not crony capitalism, it's common sense for stability.
And there are certainly places that are absolutely irredeemable and shouldn't have insurance. But this idea that letting people whose homes are destroyed in natural disasters need to be hung out to dry won't be worse than helping them get back onto their feet both for them and most likely for you is a bit odd.
If a specific area floods very frequently, it seems silly to keep bailing it out.
At some point we have to cut our losses and face reality and just stop investing there.
Edit: and then install retaining infrastructure in place of those houses and you stop future issues too for neighbors
Specifically, 1% of properties make up 25% of all claims.
Should we say that NYC should be abandoned cause Sandy hit 10 years ago and another might hit again one day?
And also I actually said in my post "there are areas we shouldn't".
However, Ft Myers is different from NYC in that sea level rises affect South Florida a hell of a lot more than Manhattan. A 10 foot sea level rise would only affect a small (but definitely not insignificant) part of Manhattan. That same rise would render all of Florida's coastlines (on both sides) uninhabitable. See link below:
NYC doesn't get hit anywhere close to as often as Florida's coasts do. It's not even comparable.
The insurers are leaving Florida in droves because their risk assessment teams understand that sea level rises and climate change is a significant financial risk to their operations in Florida, no matter how much Governor DeSantis wants to pretend otherwise.
It makes zero sense to insure areas that are going to be uninhabitable in our lifetimes, much less spend billions rebuilding them time and time again.
Disclaimer: I live in South Florida.
Disclaimer: Also in South Florida
However, the rapid rise in sea level and the fact that the state legislature is bound by law to not discuss it at all is also a factor. South Florida's coasts will be uninhabitable within 50 years, and if I'm an insurer, that's also on my mind.
Also, the efforts that I've seen are sub-par at best. Miami wants to build barrier islands that are a few feet above sea level in order to create a basin-type barrier around Brickell (the financial district where Ken Griffin is building a tower). Those are still in the early stages of bureaucratic hell and won't likely be built until it's way too late.
pun intended?
Then do it over a period of time. Reduce it to zero over, say, thirty years.
Just because something superficially resembles a good idea, doesn't make it a good idea. See also: corn subsidies.
Insanity is not stability.
It's one thing to maintain some status quo (e.g., a small town / neighborhood is already established). It's another to encourage and reward bad decisions.
There's no reasonable justification for maintaining a pattern that is destined to fail. Again and again and again.
Is this what we considered smart and effective government?
That is one of the biggest arguments against the NFIP. It’s a specific subsidy that benefits some areas more than others (it’s also a deeply regressive policy).
So it’s either subsidy upfront or on the backend?
FEMA specifically mentions that you can’t expect replacement housing costs to be paid in many of their documents: https://www.fema.gov/fact-sheet/earthquake-survivors-apply-f...
If SF sees 50% of houses uninhabitable and 12% have earthquake insurance you think the govt will shrug and say “too bad”?
The Senate never passed it and the President promised to veto it.
I have no crystal ball to know what might happen in the future but right now there is no earthquake equivalent to national flood insurance and recent history suggests the federal government doesn’t have the appetite to add it.
What I expect is less insanity. Sure, help the people that were there. But for others to be coming in from the outside and exploiting the gov's offers, that's hardly reasonable and smart.
Furthermore, it's hypocritical - and costly - for the gov to say "climate change is coming it's going to raise the oceans..." and then in the next breath "here's taxpayer money to rebuild in a low-lying area because this isn't going to happen again." If we want people to take climate change seriously, then mixed signals like this aren't helping.
Does the government pay half your salary? They take half of mine.
And I'd really like to understand how the government "takes half" of your salary. Either you're super rich (probably not), or you're exaggerating.
But then think about all the various taxes we pay directly (e.g., gasoline, internet and phone services, etc.). Then add on the taxes that are embedded in the costs of any of the other goods we buy. It adds up.
Finally, if you consider The Fed a government agency, any time The Fed devalues your money (i.e., "prints" money and creates inflation) that's also all but a tax. That is, we have less to spend.
It might not be half, but it's certainly significantly more than your income tax rate.
If you live in a major metropolitan area, or own a home that has rapidly appreciated, well, it all adds up quickly.
Also consider: import taxes raise the price of goods, and thus are a wealth transfer from consumers to producers. Sugar is the classic example: import tariffs increase the effective tax burden of the lowest income quartile substantially, as they spend a larger percentage of their income on food. Anything with high fructose corn syrup, sweetener, or sugar is more expensive. And the corn farmers get that money.
It's as if you missed the college debt forgiveness. What was that? First, the gov stepped in, manipulated a market, increased demand, etc., and that eventuallyt went sideways.
And then it stepped in to pull the plug in that mistake. The POTUS promises the forgiveness program will make buying a home more afford...because the demand he created won't result in higher prices. Huh?
The only doom comes from those who can't face facts and keep their heads buried in the sand.
No one with a fucking brain thinks that was a good idea. But that's what Democrats do.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/roofing-scams-florida-p...
However, there are cases where the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
For example, it's nice to get your energy, metals, computers, industrial machines domestically instead of being at the mercy of a foreign country. Especially if the foreign country isn't ideologically aligned with yours.
But to your point, yes we should also stop subsidizing water in the US southwest including California.
No California homeowner is paying less for homeowner’s insurance because it is sold at below cost by the federal government. They may or may not get bailed out when a loss occurs, which is different from knowing that you will.
> A 2020 survey conducted by the group found that 27% of all American homeowners insurance policyholders said they had flood insurance. And Wharton’s Risk Management and Decision Processes Center similarly found that, on average, 30% of homes in the highest-risk areas nationwide have flood coverage. [...] About 56% of consumers incorrectly assumed floods would be covered by their homeowners’ policies, according to a 2021 survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hundreds-thousands-flor...
> President Joe Biden declared nine counties disaster areas Thursday, making residents eligible for federal aid to pay for minor home repairs, short-term housing and other emergency costs. But of the 1.8 million households in those nine counties, only 29 percent have federal flood insurance, according to an analysis of government records by POLITICO’s E&E News. That leaves 1.3 million households at ground zero without federal flood coverage.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/01/hurricane-ian-will-...
The damage numbers are big but that damage areas really are quite small. What area of Florida has has the closest time of period of two devastating hurricane strikes? Is that time period measured in decades?
I’ve been in Florida for 25 years and haven't suffered a direct strike or flood damage yet. Plenty of close calls turned into hurricane parties but it would have been a pretty poor decision to leave because of fear of catastrophic loss and I’m guessing it’s the same for everyone here. If these houses being bought don’t expect catastrophic loss in the next 30 years then it’s as sane a decision to purchase as anywhere else.
The fact that market-based flood insurance would be too expensive for most people to purchase it in most places in Florida tells us a lot about the expected outcome, and "I haven't been too unlucky yet" isn't exactly an argument against that.
[0] https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
You know I keep hearing that repeated, yet after living through the last 43 hurricane seasons to date, I am not really seeing that blatant evidence of an increase in extreme weather events.
During hurricane season, we have hurricanes. Some years are worse than others, some storms are worse than others.
https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20221022/federal-support-...
I think a lot of people get number blind when it comes to big numbers and government spending.
I think they should all be provided in a per capita basis.
Pandemic spending was about $45,000 per us adult.
Defense spending is about $3,000 per us adult
IAN relief is about $5 per us adult
I think the US pandemic spending was "only" around 5 trillion. For comparison, the defense budget over the same period (2019 to 2021) added up to over 2 trillion.
1. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/g-20-nations-have-now-deploy...
This excludes ~ 5 trillion in federal reserve spending as it pumped money into the economy, which isn't technically "government spending". Of this. ~2 trillion was spent maintaining repo and other rates for liquidity. About 1.5 trillion in mortgage backed securities were purchased, and about 2.5 trillion in long term securities were purchased.
"There could be another 9/11 in NYC and people would rush in and buy property around wherever the incident occurred. Why? Everyone saw how Tribeca turned into one of the hottest neighborhoods less than 10 years after 9/11"
NOTE: For those not familiar with New York City, Tribeca was the area just north of Ground Zero.
For now at least.
Seems minor?
It might be profitable to buy up property from people who are financially destitute and willing to sell at any price and then sell once everything is rebuilt, but that a long term investment. Also if you get multiple disasters at once (Florida was lucky to only be hit by 1 hurricane) you might wind up at the tail end of rebuilding like Puerto Rico and never be able to sell.