Helene Should Trigger a National Rethink of Home Insurance | Hacker News Reader

Helene Should Trigger a National Rethink of Home Insurance

newrepublic.com

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> “Extending mandatory coverage to all property owners,” in line with the approach taken in New Zealand, “could become thinkable in a way that it never has been before.”

I'm not sure that's the correct solution here. Giving people flood insurance when they build on the beach in Florida is just a bad idea. There is going to be a flood claim; it's not really insuring against a risk, you know the risk is going to happen several times while they own the house.

Pretty sure the actual solution is earlier in the article. Update the flood maps to reflect the current risk. Sure, people might not be able to afford a property (from the extra insurance requirement) in a flood zone; but from what I can see in the article, people can't afford to rebuilt after Helene so all they did was move the affordability issue from when they bought the house to when Helene hit.

I don't think the people in North Carolina are in any way a flood zone - meaning most rainfalls and storms will not and has not caused flooding there in the history of that location.

Merely extending flood insurance is not the solution. There should be a national pool of money available for climate disasters that can be disbursed every year to the major disaster incidents. This money can be raised from corporations or insurance companies or executives or any other pots of wealth.

The problem with a national climate disaster relief fund is that there is no incentive structure to push people to protect their property or migrate to less risky areas. We have areas that are destroyed every other year but people keep on rebuilding.

Perhaps as an alternative there could be a national fund with risk adjusted fees that is mandatory in cities that receive services.

It should be funded by a carbon tax… the root cause of the more rapid and intense climate change.

Gas and carbon emitting electricity sources should be a LOT more expensive than they are. That would then push more people to EVs and renewables even faster and if there is demand than economies of scale will be reached and the prices of EVs and renewables will fall even further.

Ah yes, people who are currently struggling with the prices of eggs and other necessities will run out and buy an EV tomorrow (absent infrastructure improvements of course) if only we increase their electricity bill too as a form of punitive social tax. Let's also not forget to twist whilst squeezing their testicles.

Compare: "How dare you start fining anybody who poops in the local water supply! Some poor villagers can't afford to dig their own latrines! You monster!"

You're presenting a false dilemma: We can have laws against inflicting harm on other people through pollution and do more to help the poor. Granting a special license to pollute is not a reasonable way to fix chronic poverty anyway.

> There is going to be a flood claim;

I feel like I'm missing something. Wouldn't this be something to price into coverage? If it's a high risk, premiums up to 1/x of the home value. Don't like it? You can't afford to own the house.

In New Zealand after the Christchurch earthquake, the government condemned entire suburbs and made it illegal to build there.

They then initiated an inspection of every multi-storey building, and allocated an NBS rating. Some buildings were condemned, and other buildings must be strengthened. It's almost impossible to sell these affected buildings.

So in the US for a national insurance scheme to work, the government would need to actively remove high risk properties.

New Zealand also has no state governments, just one national government. So it's much easier for them to implement these sorts of policies.

> the government would need to actively remove high risk properties.

Those that couldn't pay the insurance (like 100% of your property value, by risk), just like any other repossession would require the local govt to help take control of the property. The Fed's work would be in verifying valuations and setting profit margins. eg Regulation. Sounds good to me.

At this point, the insurance is basically the cost of replacing your house, guaranteed in 10 years.

These people barely can afford paying a 30 year mortgage.

There's absolutely no logic behind insurance in Florida or anywhere along the coast.

Even if 10 years is hyperbole, the real risks are absolutely not insurable.

There are a ton of waterfront homes here in fl on the gulf coast that haven't flooded in 50+ years since they were built...until last week.

It is absolutely not a guarantee that all waterfront property should just be written off. But some property absolutely should because this shit happens every 5 years.

At the moment, the cost of flood insurance in the US is too cheap. That is, the price doesn't reflect the risk. It is a ticking time bomb.

On the other hand, if you are a home owner in a flood zone, the best "investment" you can make is buy flood insurance and hope for a flood.

Of note, flood insurance is nationalized, so probably will be backed by your tax dollars

They've been trying to update flood maps for decades.

The problem is: as soon as those maps become public, thousands of homeowners are suddenly underwater in their mortgages and cannot sell or do anything but wait to lose everything.

There's far more socialism that needs work than just telling people their American dream is actually worthless and they should be homeless.

This isn't new, regulations require actual care for society. Capitalism isn't going to cut it.

Isn't flood insurance already nationalized? My understanding was about 100 years ago these properties in flood zones were deemed un-insurable by the private industry and the government decided to fill in the gap, probably because a lot of wealthy landowners owned these properties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Flood_Insurance_Progr...

Around here there is a local grocery store that has flooded requiring a complete gutting 3 times in the last 20 years. And they're rebuilding it again. Seems like insanity to me but if some one is willing to sell you subsidized insurance for this and there isn't an available plot of land infested with NIMBY red tape I can understand why they do it. I can't understand why anyone thinks this is a good way to set things up though.

> Hurricane Helene crashed into an insurance sector facing a series of potentially existential questions, and a policy landscape in which the United States has left key decisions about how communities prepare for and recover from disasters in the hands of companies that exist to turn a profit—not provide protection. “Right now, we’re essentially leaving all of these decisions about land use and where risk mitigation happens up to insurance companies,” says Moira Birss, a longtime organizer and fellow at the Climate & Community Institute.

Insurance companies are probably the entity best incentivized and infotmed to make decisions about where to build houses and what risk mitigation to do.

Except they tend to use only publicly funded maps or pull out all together.

They're best informed not to take the risks.

And when government has tried to update flood maps, the citizens stop them because those maps level house prices to basically kill the value of homes and there's no socialist plan to ensure they move out. Instead nothing changes and insurance just either pulls out or waits for the end then stops covering.

It's mostly capitalism in action: bad choices to spend money into bad choices, because that raises the GDP via "rebuilding"

Insurance companies are best incentivized and informed to make themselves a requirement, take your money, and then resist all efforts to actually pay you when you need them.

No, it should trigger a national rethink on where we allow people to keep rebuilding over and over - or at least provide public services and funding - local, state, or federal for those areas.

The problem is that this is the first time these mountain communities have ever seen this sort of event. Coastal areas, sure we need to retreat from the coast, but these mountain communities have never gotten a year of rain in a few hours before.

The mountains of North Carolina had devastating floods caused by tropical storms in 1916.

I live 2 hours away from the mountains of North Carolina. I grew up in the foothills. You have no idea what you are talking about. People aren’t rebuilding here, “over and over.” This was a climate disaster full stop. If we as a species don’t get our shit together and stop poisoning our planet this will keep happening.

No no. If we don’t get our shit together this will get WORSE. If we do get our shit together this will still happen for a long long time.

Yes, and that rethink should be that insurance of all forms is a racket.

While we're at this rethink, let us also consider the wisdom of stretching infrastructure miles into the countryside without pricing it in to utility services.

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