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Comment by kdmccormick | Hacker News Reader

I'm no free-market zealot, but in this case it seems like the market has spoken. They shouldn't live there!

Of course, there are ways to be humane about this, given that tearing people apart from their communities is bad for society. The government could taper off the program slowly, giving communities time to relocate. Or they could provide damage payouts with the stipulation that they are used to relocate somewhere else with lower risk, not rebuild in the same spot.

But to indefinitely subsidize building in doomed places? Doesn't seem right. I'm sure there's nuance I'm missing, happy to be enlightened.

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I don’t think you are missing any nuance at this point.

If the amount of uninsurable properties is (comparatively) small, it’s way easier to throw some money at them and keep everyone happy. I think that’s the basic premise of the program.

Everything changes when, for example, a large chunk of South Florida becomes uninsurable or inhabitable, potentially displacing hundreds of thousands. I don’t think we have anything in place for that scenario.

Can’t we pay to put them on busses or something? That seems to be the approach to the displaced which is favoured by Florida politicians after all.

People will always be willing to pay a premium to live near the ocean. There are some places where that premium will be too high except the very very wealthy - living on a barrier island - for example.

In order to enjoy living in places where nature exact a larger toll - near the ocean, on a mountain that gets dry and doesn't have a fire station nearby - homeowners will need to invest in hardening their homes, invest in buying more expensive insurance and will need to make sure they have the financial buffer to rebuild if their home is damaged by the weather.

As the ocean rises, we will need to move more inland.

Of course. This is all common sense and I'd wager that most people feel this way.

That's why I'm surprised that the government provides subsidized insurance for folks in extremely flood-prone areas.

I would think that the market would also adjust towards building more hurricane resistant housing like earthquake proof buildings in San Francisco and Tokyo

Read the act 1 section, or listen to the podcast. This has been tried and it's basically impossible in a capitalist system with local democracy. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/762/transcript

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