Article on flood insurance creating a problem

[Geo-TH,In]

Here is a clip of article.

NFIP paid to rebuild one Houston home 16 times in 18 years, spending almost a million dollars to perpetually restore a house worth less than $120,000. Harris County, Texas (which includes Houston), has almost 10,000 properties which have filed repetitive flood insurance damage claims. The Washington Post recently reported that a house ?outside Baton Rouge, valued at $55,921, has flooded 40 times over the years, amassing $428,379 in claims. A $90,000 property near the Mississippi River north of St. Louis has flooded 34 times, racking up claims of more than $608,000.?

Albert Einstein famously said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

After you read this article you may say rebuilding is a flood prone area may fit Einstein's definition of insanity. Others may say they have a right to build where I want.

You decide what sounds crazy.
opinion on flood insurance

 

[dpendzic]

the same thing is happening on Long Island out on the south shore Hampton area---breaches break thru fire island and wipe out hundreds of homes. The ACOE fills in the beach and the homeowners rebuild. A few years ago they decided the beach needs to be widened and raised. 30 million dollar project to pump sand on the beach.

 

[Stroby]

This behavior has a lot to do with why premiums are so high. Every policy holder helps pay for this stuff.

 

[Blackhole49]

Insanity= 108 billion dollars to rebuild a city below sea level on the Gulf coast in hurricane alley.

 

[MarkB_MI]

> Albert Einstein famously said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Actually, Einstein never said what he "famously said". It's generally attributed to the AA organization.

Pretty much any government program has unintended consequences. That doesn't mean we should eliminate them just because they don't do exactly what they were supposed to do. Instead, figure out what went wrong with a particular program and fix THAT. In the case of NFIP, the intention was to discourage development in flood-prone areas, but the result was exactly the opposite. And now we have 40 years worth of construction in areas that shouldn't have been developed, and for which the taxpayers are pretty much on the hook to provide subsidized insurance. According to the article, efforts in Congress to fix NFIP have failed, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

 

[David G]

I believe flood insurance should be one shot

 

[kevinthefixer]

(quoted from post at 07:48:33 09/10/17) Insanity= 108 billion dollars to rebuild a city below sea level on the Gulf coast in hurricane alley.

+1 on that. New Orleans, Houston, Manhattan, lots more. Put fields and orchards and industrial complexes there, not homes & high-rises. Or let the sea have it back.

 

[Greg1959]

David G- I agree. One time payout then the property becomes Federal land. Bulldoze all structures and return it to a 'wetland' and make a National Park.

By converting all of these low lying areas back to wetlands, we can free up some "mudholes" in crop producing states that are deemed 'wetlands' back to "cropland".

 

[Geo-TH,In]

After our 2008 flood, government bought them out, removed home. Property turned over to DNR.

That makes sense.

 

[kcm.MN]

Agreed.

I could see it if there was a payout once every x-number of years - say 10, or better yet, 20 years. If you have to file again within that time frame, then they buy you out and WILL NOT pay out if you rebuild on the same site again.

Unfortunately, our elected officials can't seem to get simple ideas through their 'complex' brains. *lol*

 

[Geo-TH,In]

Does it really matter who said it? IMHO, it still a good definition for insanity, doesn't everyone agree???

 

[Senator]

Be careful about wanting the government to take over more land area. The federal government already owns 30% of the land area in this country. Like higher property taxes? Every acre the government takes possession of comes off the tax roles. Which means the remaining privately held property pays more to make up the difference. Government held property produces no wealth (money), quite the opposite it costs money to maintain and administer. That means higher income tax. And add to the cost they are forever creating reasons to restrict our access to "their" land.

Now I would not personally live in an area that got hit by hurricanes every couple years, but if people choose to live in these areas with the full knowledge of the probability of disaster, well good luck.

In fact where can one live where mother nature can't slap you down? Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, floods, etc. can get anyone of us depending where we live.

Personally, concerning flood insurance, maybe we should end the program. Folks continue to live in these high risk areas partly because they know they will not take a loss if a flood occurs. Pay the insurance, and if it happens we will get a new house. If they knew it would all be gone forever I'll bet a lot of folks would choose not to live in those areas.

 

[wisbaker]

Some of it has to be political, in some areas they remove the homes and buy the property and re-zone it so houses can't be built. Heck I live West of Mason City Iowa, they had a big flood in 2008 and they took down houses that were 80-100 years old without previous claims and won't allow those areas to be built on. Back in the 90's we had a big flood on the Ohio Valley and some communities in Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky had similar instances where houses were torn down and open spaces were created. Our fleet manager at the location I worked at mentioned that the town he grew up in had 20-25% of the houses in the city torn down after that flood. It also seems there used to be some regulations about what you could re-build or improvements on property in flood zones, when I was stationed at McDill AFB there were houses on the east side of the Tampa peninsula that were being raised up 10-12 feet, literally they picked some of these big old craftsman era houses up and put them on concrete stilts. Our realtor explained that if a renovation went over a certain percentage of the property value they had to raise all occupied spaces above the predicted storm surge of a certain sized hurricane. Must be one of those rules are only for SOME folks situations.

 

[Geo-TH,In]

Agree, wonder how many votes 108 billion paid for???

 

[MarkB_MI]

> Does it really matter who said it? IMHO, it still a good definition for insanity, doesn't everyone agree???

Well, George, I for one don't agree. I've known a number of folks with varying forms of mental illness, and none of them exhibited the symptom of repeating something expecting a different result.

And yes, it does matter who said it. It's a fairly safe assumption Einstein would NOT have made that statement, but somebody thought it would sound wiser if it was attributed to a smart person. Would it have the same impact if it was attributed to, say Gerald Ford? (You'll recall that ole Jerry played college football in a leather helmet, and sometimes it showed.)

Now I don't think it's a particularly bad adage, even if it does fly in the face of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again". But I think we can all think of examples of when we tried the exact same thing N times and it failed, only to succeed on attempt N + 1.

That said, there are certainly cases when something fails enough that it's time to call it quits and try something else. Supply-side economics, for example: Trickle-down economics was tried at the federal level three times and failed miserably. And it's been attempted at the state level, failing each time. Yet there are those who insist it's gonna work NEXT TIME.

 

[Geo-TH,In]

Senator,
Recently the DNR has taken over a lot of flood prone areas, even what used to be farm land. Calling it healthy river. I posted a pic of one of their signs about a mile north of me.
Hundreds of acres of farm land about 3 miles west.
geo
DNR sign

 

[kcm.MN]

Senator, I feel the same way you do about the gov't taking over land. Problem is, the majority of folks don't seem to see a problem with it, so long as the gov't makes good to the previous owner(s).

Problem I see is, by law, DNR is only allowed so many acres of land. After that, they have to give, sell or trade it away. So what's to say the same property that once had a "Cannot Ever Rebuild" clause on it doesn't end up in someone else's hands, and they ARE allowed to build?

Doesn't seem like there's any way to beat this system - not so long as the system is wanted by enough people. And as this is the age of Personal Entitlements and Gov't Handouts, I doubt seriously this will change any time soon. As soon as someone would come out talking against the NFIP, scores of others will rip down walls and woodwork screaming that you must certainly hate all those poor, unfortunate people. Next thing you know, you're the bad guy.