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Comment by rsj_hn | Hacker News Reader

By the same logic, all the houses built in the earthquake zones of San Francisco and LA should also be raised.

I've noticed that there has been mass hysteria in some California-centric websites that flood insurance must be provided by the Federal government in Florida, but not that earthquake insurance must be provided by the Federal government in California.

Botton line, the private sector doesn't handle this type of correlated risk well, and somehow picking on Florida when California does the same thing is pretty weird. We know there will be a big earthquake that will level a lot of property in California just we know there will be a big flood in Florida. Yet "entitled fucks" keep choosing to live in these states. Life goes on.

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> I've noticed that there has been mass hysteria in some California-centric websites that flood insurance must be provided by the Federal government in Florida, but not that earthquake insurance must be provided by the Federal government in California.

Earthquake insurance availability is mandated within the state. Why would we need a Federal mandate when we have an effective state mandate. It's not attractively priced, but Federal flood insurance often isn't attractively priced when they've updated maps recently either.

Last time I was in the housing market in San Francisco, earthquake insurance was not mandated. Can you point me to the law mandating it now? Perhaps you mean it's mandated by your bank when taking out a mortgage? That's a private sector decision that depends on your bank and your loan.

Anyways, you are confusing the issue of whether insurance is mandated with the fact that no private insurer will cover it, and so the risk is socialized and the only providers are government.

That's what people are complaining about -- that private insurers walked away from covering flood/earthquakes in regions prone to the same, and so the government has to step in to insure the correlated risk. This causes no end of outrage for Florida but is somehow just fine in California. And my only point was to point out this hypocrisy and argue that there are good reasons for government to cover correlated risks and that there is nothing wrong with either state or those who choose to build in either state. They can accept risk or they can purchase government insurance.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

AFAIK, your residential insurance carrier is mandated to offer you Earthquake insurance. If there's some exception I'm not aware of, let me know.

Generational vs 5-10X Generation events should not be treated the same.

Soft-story retrofits are a thing and should be expanded with long-term State loans

1989 was, what, 34 years ago? This is a 5-10X generation event to you, I guess. I can't even begin to unwind all the innumerate assumptions, but motivated reasoning is powerful I guess.

There are fewer places where it is more reckless to build housing than coastal California.

My point was that if voters had to eat their own medicine they wouldn't encumber new entrants to rules they themselves are immune to. I didn't seriously think they would vote to raze their own (previously immune) houses.

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