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Comment by oldjim798 | Hacker News Reader

We need to start paying people to leave Florida. Moving that population will be cheaper than trying and failing to make it resistant to climate change

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You don't even need to leave Florida, just don't live right on the beach on in flood prone areas. My parents live south of Tampa along the coast but not right on the coast, the beach is maybe a 5 minute drive. I remember when Helene and Milton hit I was incredibly worried but afterwards the worst "damage" to the property was their outdoor garden didn't survive. Contrast this with some homes we saw along the beach that were completely destroyed by the storms.

But I get why people keep coming back. There's something so magical about those little villages along the beach. Besides the storms they are incredible places to live and I get why people keep rolling the dice on those places. It's much the same reason that people keep rolling the dice on places like Hollywood Hills even though there is a massive risk o fires and landslides up there.

This is a somewhat hasty generalization. Plenty of us who live and have our entire extended family in Florida manage to do so without living in areas of high flood risk. I live less than a mile from the St John’s river, but practically the entire city of Jacksonville would have to be underwater for it to reach my house.

"This is fine." Seriously though, if a significant part of the city flooded, the fact you didn't have property damage from a specific flooding event isn't very much comfort. There would be disruption from impassable streets, infrastructure damage, and emergency services pushed to the limit.

You could say that of anyplace, of course. The point is that it’s more nuanced than, “Everybody should just leave Florida.”

What about the vast swaths of people not in flood zones with hurricane proof homes.

Been through 11 storms with only power loss and 3 pieces of siding coming off my home here in central Florida. Helps that many communities are 10-40ft above the water table.

People like to beat up on Florida just like they like to beat up on Texas because their identity is tied to a political party. I was born in Port Orange and lived through a couple hurricanes there, ow I live in Dallas and have had some close calls with tornados. Weather is def. a thing and it can get real bad but people lose perspective because of the whole red/blue thing.

No, I beat up on Florida and Texas because we’re expected to spend hundreds of billions to keep these places habitable every few years when large swaths of the state are torn to shreds and in exchange they vote for people who want to literally kill me.

Government spending on social services it out of control until my flood zone house built with every corner cut collapses.

>hurricane proof homes.

No such creature.

Or at least stop paying them to stay. Let the insurance rates soar to their proper place.

They are rising, in some cases by a lot. In fact, an argument could be made that Florida is promoting a healthier insurance market than California is.

See Brudger's comment about this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45428287

TL;DR: The Federal Government subsidizes flood insurance.

I saw it and it has NO applicability to my comment. I'm talking about home insurance.

> We need to start paying people to leave Florida.

I won’t repeat what others have said about risk profile isn’t uniform across FL.

I think tax dollars would be better spent:

- educating and making more transparent the realities that business and private citizens face due to global warming and what actions are being done at the individual and societal level (eg special taxes to fund projects that fight against global warming and its effects)

- make it very very expensive to build in flood zones, with limited, if any, bailouts

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