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Comment by throwmeaway222 | Hacker News Reader

Well in the end it evens out in making more people homeless.

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.

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How does it make more people homeless? Insurance absolutely is a good proxy for real risk and there are plenty of places to be building homes. If you live in a flood zone you can still get the government to help cover some of the risk but also… flood zones are not new. I don’t really want to incentive people to continue to buy and build in these areas. Use the dollars to rebuild elsewhere.

Because when people get priced out of their existing homes they often find that they can't afford houses elsewhere either.

Insurance was not supposed to work this way first of all.

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 was not supposed to work this way first of all.

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.

How is this the fault of insurance companies? Building more houses would fix this issue, not pushing the narrative that people are entitled to a plot of land for eternity.

Right, and not just entitled to the plot, but entitled to have the pitfalls of that plot negated by society to their benefit.

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