Hacker News Reader

It might even be possible to go further, and prevent certain locations from receiving federal insurance for a period (say, 100 years) after a payout. Make the federal flood insurance program an incentive to rebuild elsewhere.

View on HN

While this makes a lot of sense in theory (I do agree that people need to be moving away from flood plains), this policy would create a nightmare of downstream effects. Such as, substantially increasing housing/land/construction prices elsewhere, as you have a flood of insurance filled wallets looking for new areas to move. It may even incentivize moving to nearby areas that were not flooded but still eligible for insurance, since they will just get paid out again. Not to mention all the political ramifications from the political willpower to pass this, to local/state electors crying against it.

Not to mention: decreasing the cost of housing in stricken areas. It would be much more appealing for people with low assets.

Talk about a crappy situation.

There is only a finite number of areas like that and most are already built on. Even if one person collects insurance ever year it would not be an issues as the insurance is for the property and it would have been destroyed anyway the actual recipient doesn’t affect the total payout.

I think this is the only way forward in Florida. You can build for certain disasters but its a lot easier to just be inland.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com