How else do you convince people not to build and live in spots that are known to be disaster areas, in a country that has so much space that you can drive somewhere and run out of fuel?
"Rezoning" is a needless control that then prevents future development that might be impervious to whatever disasters caused the periodic rebuilding before.
The problem with this method is that it tends to gentrify the region. Wealthier people can afford to live elsewhere during the repairs, but people living paycheck to paycheck are often forced to take the money and sell the land.
The correct, but very unpopular decision is to forbid rebuilding in those areas.
I hope you can get out of there before the house is unsellable, or at least get the material cost back.
Today - there are thousands of families who have to decide whether to live in an uninsured home in a disaster prone area or spend a bunch of money/uproot their lives/move elsewhere/find a new job etc. I'm going to guess most will stick with option 1, because they cannot afford the alternative.
One common reaction to this is state subsidies or regulation to make it more affordable (see this in California and Florida). While this is bad, spending money on the problem is good. People often conflate "dont subsidize" with "dont spend money." Instead they should spend it to offset the damage/inconvenience done to the people affected. Moving assistance or something. Not subsidize living in dangerous areas.
It's kind of the Warren Buffet approach to people whose livelihoods are ruined by a changing economy. It's real harm and its not fair, but you dont stop progress. You also dont say "fuck em" - you support the people who get left behind.
Any assistance on moving out is a very bad idea. There are rising insurance costs, slowly, people have time to respond.
People in Florida did not even advocate for mitigations that would have prevented the rising costs, when they were given decades of warning.
Protecting home values above all else is very bad for society. Unless renters are given the same protection and massive handouts, it's a very unfair system
Yes, you support the people left behind with the profits of the people who are ahead.
The US voters just hate that type of equality. And as a result the vindication is merited - that is an inherent feature of non-merit based inequal societies, just the the US is.
If you know the government will throw billions to your aid, then a disaster zone is actually far less risk than if they would not.
Or maybe you just like the beaches in Miami so much that you would rather part with the money than the beauty? Still a market working rationally.
> East Grand Forks, along with Grand Forks, was heavily damaged by a major flood in 1997. The entire city was under a mandatory evacuation and almost no homes were spared damage. After the flood, several neighborhoods had to be demolished because of damage. The city cleared development from the floodplain bordering the Red and Red Lake rivers. It developed a large park known as the Greater Grand Forks Greenway to provide a new recreation area for residents along the river. A similar park was developed in Grand Forks. The parklands, with trees and a variety of greenery, can absorb floodwaters and help protect the cities naturally. Moving residential and business development out of these areas also helps prevent future flood damage. In addition, a new system of dikes was constructed to protect the city from future flooding. The city has since rebuilt.
I must point out that much of the available space is marginally suitable, at best, for residential communities. We already have large cities in places that require unsustainable levels of resource consumption to continue existing.
Just considering water: Los Angeles is a desert made green by importing water from hundreds of miles away (and destroying the communities that used to exist near the water sources). The Colorado River is oversubscribed, and most years never reaches the ocean. Groundwater sources like the Ogallala Aquifer are depleted.
This doesn't begin to count the effects of sprawl and urbanization on wildlife populations.
I don’t feel sorry for these people. They made choice and the evidence this was inevitable was in front of them for 10 years at least. They don’t deserve special consideration.
Considering how we treat things like job loss, which is a good allegory here as it has all the same features of circumstance, why do they deserve special considerations that aren’t extended to other groups?
Hurricanes killed around 2,000 people in the last quarter century, not tens of thousands, https://www.statista.com/statistics/203729/fatalities-caused....
Its not as simple as "N people died from literally being inside the storm, therefore the number of potentially saved lives is N". There is always a domino effect from a massive disaster, even if "just" a couple of people die directly at the hand of the disaster.
Next after heat waves is severe storms. Same thing. Then winter storms. Same thing.
Insurance companies are avoiding a couple particular types of natural disaster that have the capacity for massive property damage at a single point in time in a concentrated area, mainly tropical storms and wildfires. Those natural disasters just don't cause many deaths in the US.
Tens of millions of people live in those areas. If you're going to talk about "the resulting depressions, financial issues, etc." you might want to give some consideration to tens of millions of people being forced to move, to risk going uninsured, or losing their homes.
Using public funding to keep on bailing people out is going to get expensive for everyone and won't be that popular the more often it happens. Expensive bailouts make them a natural cutting target.
The way this works out financially is that insurance prices go first. Then banks do the obvious thing which is to be reluctant to provide mortgages on property likely to suffer damage within the mortgage period. That probably is already a thing. That in turn makes existing property a harder sell and affects property prices negatively. And as a result, some property mortgages might be under water before the property is under water. A natural disaster would wipe out the uninsured property and then the mortgage. Any banks with lots of exposure to that might be facing issues if that happens.
Any public funding used mitigate that is more likely to go to these banks than the people affected. Which won't be popular.
Easy to spell this out, because minus the root cause (natural disasters), this is more or less what happened around 2009 when banks had to be bailed out because of the subprime loans. Loads of foreclosures and misery. But it was the banks that got the bailout.
The predictable end result is that after a few disasters, certain areas just won't be rebuilt again because nobody is willing to fund that. Some people might move out before the worst happens. Banks and insurers will be the first to move out. Probably sooner rather than later. That probably won't be great for people that remain since investments in public infrastructure and maintenance of things like roads will also drop off for the same reason.
I disagree it is humanitarian to entice people to live in more dangerous areas.
The question is is it good for the mainlanders to subsidize or give money to people in Hawaii to live next to volcanoes. As you said, they have lived there for 1,500 years without subsidies from others. They can continue to do so without taking capital from people who chose to live in safer places.
We won't be giving them one of those things so it seems fair to give them the other.
This comment about how we shouldn't be living in disaster zones is completely out of touch with A) Where people live. and B) What a disaster zone is.
Coastal cities (where 59% of people live) will say it's prone to hurricanes and tsunami's, flooding and storms. 50% increase.
Inland cities, floods and landslides - 50% increase.
Desert Towns, dust storms and tornados - 50% increase.
Mountain Towns, floods and landslides - 50% increase.
Nomadic villages of hippies and communes, tornados and floods - 50% increase.
I know not of a single home owner who's premiums didn't go up, no matter where they live.
And those disasters are geographically off. Hurricanes are not a coastal thing for the whole nation, west coast does not get them. Tornadoes are not a desert thing. All those sound like being pulled out of a hat without actual knowledge.
I’m at least 500 miles inland. It no longer matters about geography and it matters whether there was ever one in the past. The last few hurricanes went deep into Midwest land so naturally, we are now in hurricane zones.
When I saw the headline "disaster-prone cities," I thought maybe they were talking about crime or terrorism or something. For something like a hurricane, everyone in the danger area would see insurance rates go up, not just those in the cities. Odd way to word it.
People in hurricane zones are used to evacuating and have plenty of advanced notice. For the vast majority of the time they're able to enjoy a healthy beach lifestyle - relaxing, great climate, fun hobbies. It's extremely rewarding to live near the beach. I'm sure there are studies that show positive impact to health and healthspan outcomes as well.
The problem is that America was for several generations living in a privileged bubble. The post-WWII period was very good for us. We could afford to build, rebuild, and rebuild again. Labor costs and material costs were low, and there wasn't overwhelming demand. This advantage lasted for a whopping 50 years as we transitioned from strength to strength, shifting from a manufacturing economy to a robust consumption and services economy.
Until recently, it didn't cost a million dollars to put a home near the beach. What's changed is the economic position of the country and the financial capability of the average American. We can't build houses for $60,000 anymore.
This is less a signal of "insurance getting smarter" and more of a signal the outsized advantages of America are coming (have already come) to an end.
the post war economy was an aberration when the rest of the world was recovering from being bombed to hell, it was never going to last forever. excesses like cheap rebuilding are just not as good of an idea of building to last in safe areas.
It's a totally different story now that the average beachside "home" is a $10 million dollar mansion.
Skipping past all of the other negatives about living in a known disaster prone area, we couldn’t afford to rebuild even back then without endless deficit spending. As I speak, New Orleans is still in the process of rebuilding post-Katrina decades later.
> This is less a signal of "insurance getting smarter" and more of a signal that American excess is coming to an end.
They’re not mutually exclusive.
Here are your choices: a 800k house that require you to work 18 taco bell/gas station/home depot shifts per day OR out in the boonies where if you want insurance you need to work 5 shifts per day. Both are impossible, so you just work 3 shifts and don't have insurance and use food stamps to eat.
There stories are not well distributed but people that get priced out of cities end up buying a singlewide/double wide or just rent and then the house gets destroyed and they have no insurance and end up entirely on the streets.
So yes it is definitely insensitive to say that. Perhaps you would understand if your cushy tech job was 25k per year instead of 225k.
You're a woman so we're going to charge you double for health insurance because you know, your boobs might get lumps.
I do agree with people that "rebuild and rebuild and rebuild" in the same area without the codes catching up.. I think if someone is wealthy enough they can afford james hardie siding ALL the way up - for example in a fire zone.
I think the insurance should be the same cost but the payout should be capped based on the decisions that are made.
Insurance is a mechanism to transfer risk, this is exactly how it works. Actuaries calculate risk, and then the insurance company sells a policy they think they can make money on based on the calculated risk.
US health insurance isn’t insurance, it’s just called insurance for whatever reason.