> Federal Support for Hurricane Ian Recovery Climbs Past $1.2 Billion, FEMA Provides Over $581 Million in Individual Assistance to Jumpstart Survivor Recovery
I'm curious where you get the 11 trillion figure for pandemic spending. Because that sounds like the total spending for all the G20 nations combined, not just the US.[1]
I think the US pandemic spending was "only" around 5 trillion. For comparison, the defense budget over the same period (2019 to 2021) added up to over 2 trillion.
you are correct that US federal spending was around 5-6 trillion.
This excludes ~ 5 trillion in federal reserve spending as it pumped money into the economy, which isn't technically "government spending". Of this. ~2 trillion was spent maintaining repo and other rates for liquidity. About 1.5 trillion in mortgage backed securities were purchased, and about 2.5 trillion in long term securities were purchased.
"Sense of community" is a commodity to be extracted and exhausted by real estate investors, unless it's undesirable for developers (read: poor rural area or high crime urban area) or already expensive enough to price out newcomers.
That's precisely why people are moving there. They're hoping to make a quick buck flipping flood destroyed homes to unsuspecting new residents moving in from out of state in 6 months when people forget about all of this.
Most of these places won't be completely destroyed. The house will mostly be there so they'll do some cosmetic repairs, repair the most obvious damage, landscaping, and then try and sell it down the road.
Brick construction has terrible shear strength, exactly what you don’t want in wind-resistant construction. Also, the insides of the house aren’t brick and will still be destroyed by flood waters.
Florida actually has pretty high building code standards for new construction. I think a lot of the issue is from older housing stock, especially from before like Hurricane Andrew in the early 90s
This is the post I was waiting for. All rebuilt homes will be subject to the post Andrew codes and will be a lot different and more expensive. The new homes compared to the homes that were destroyed is an apples to oranges comparison.
Most homes in Florida (in the last couple decades at least) are built with "Concrete block construction" to adhere to Florida's hurricane codes. Concrete block also combats things like termites/mold/mildew, which are a bigger problem in that area.
Someone needs to make a website informing people who do not know anything about construction that “European style with proper bricks” is not ideal in all scenarios, and that wood is an appropriate building material in many circumstances.
If I were dictator everyone who generalizes about Europe would be forced to hitchhike throughout ALL of Europe, Iceland to the Urals.
Additionally, people who hand wring about "America doesn't regulate" some thing that 48+ states regulate but isn't federally regulated would be put in the stocks and the townsfolk be provided with quick reference guides for various niche subsets of state law to throw at them.
When you see aerial footage of the aftermath of a hurricane you will see houses that look nearly untouched, some roof damage, next to houses completely demolished. Building codes have evolved so the age of the structure matters a lot in its survivability in a storm.
That will stop being a thing after a few rounds of record breaking floods. At some point insurers will withdraw their hands from the whole thing. Government and public support will run out at some point.
Red states are self interested and won't say no to handouts as long as they receive them. Blue states believe we're "all in this together". So neither "side" has an incentive to raise the issue. Plus no one wants to be the guy who refused to help that poor down on their luck american who got their house blown away on the TV...
> Virtually no private market for flood insurance exists for most residential and commercial properties.
While the rest of the country may not want to subsidize coastal FL and TX, I doubt the issue could gain enough political steam to overcome advocates from beneficiaries of NFIP.
Yep, my parents are moving to the Florida coast. I carefully floated the notion that their property will be underwater in 30 years, and they were just like, who cares, we're probably not going to live for 30 more years anyway.
I find it insane how the US govt constantly subsidizes certain activities without many people realizing. NFIP, the implicit guarantees on FHLBs, and a bunch of others just lead to misaligned incentives all over the place :/
And yet we're told Uncle Sam believes in the free market? We don't have Capitalism. We have Crony Capitalism. The latter has little to do with the former.
There's also the fact that if we don't subsidize places where natural disasters occur millions of people are going to start moving rather quickly.
Everywhere's a disaster zone now, we need to account for that, do our best to warn people, and do our best to help people get back to it. This is true here, and around the globe.
Mass migrations are _destabilizing_. It's not crony capitalism, it's common sense for stability.
And there are certainly places that are absolutely irredeemable and shouldn't have insurance. But this idea that letting people whose homes are destroyed in natural disasters need to be hung out to dry won't be worse than helping them get back onto their feet both for them and most likely for you is a bit odd.
Agreed, and the regular insurance companies figured out the solution a long time ago: raise premiums until their expected value exceeds the payouts over the average duration of this type of policy.
And most of the places that have major recurring flooding issues are hyper local (for now at least). We're talking neighborhoods or parts of neighborhoods, not full cities (yet). The number of affected properties is relatively small, but they make up a large portion of overall claims. Stop covering those locations (even if it's a coordinated buyout program of sorts) and the problem sorts itself out...
Edit: and then install retaining infrastructure in place of those houses and you stop future issues too for neighbors
Ft. Myers has been hit a few times, but you're right - it's not constant. But Florida in general gets hit pretty hard every year - it's just that it happens to different parts of Florida. The Keys get battered every few years, so does Miami, so does Tampa. Even Orlando is not safe.
However, Ft Myers is different from NYC in that sea level rises affect South Florida a hell of a lot more than Manhattan. A 10 foot sea level rise would only affect a small (but definitely not insignificant) part of Manhattan. That same rise would render all of Florida's coastlines (on both sides) uninhabitable. See link below:
NYC doesn't get hit anywhere close to as often as Florida's coasts do. It's not even comparable.
The insurers are leaving Florida in droves because their risk assessment teams understand that sea level rises and climate change is a significant financial risk to their operations in Florida, no matter how much Governor DeSantis wants to pretend otherwise.
It makes zero sense to insure areas that are going to be uninhabitable in our lifetimes, much less spend billions rebuilding them time and time again.
Are you sure it's due to risk assessment for climate change and not the huge amount of fraud and litigation? I've heard that something like 80% of all homeowners insurance lawsuits have been from Florida despite only having 9% of claims. When I looked into the issue that was the driving cause I found, it would be good to read some info about the climate change assessment making it into their decision to pull out.
I'm sure it's a mix of both. Yes, there's a ton of home insurance lawsuits here, and yes, the amount of fraud here is mind-boggling.
However, the rapid rise in sea level and the fact that the state legislature is bound by law to not discuss it at all is also a factor. South Florida's coasts will be uninhabitable within 50 years, and if I'm an insurer, that's also on my mind.
Incorrect. Florida is currently undergoing a massive effort to identify resiliency options across the state. There are lots of efforts in the state at the city, county, and state level to address this.
Also, the efforts that I've seen are sub-par at best. Miami wants to build barrier islands that are a few feet above sea level in order to create a basin-type barrier around Brickell (the financial district where Ken Griffin is building a tower). Those are still in the early stages of bureaucratic hell and won't likely be built until it's way too late.
I'll believe it when there's an income-based phase-out, exceptions for multiple homeowners, and tapering with a firm expiration date built into the legislation.
Just because something superficially resembles a good idea, doesn't make it a good idea. See also: corn subsidies.
> Mass migrations are _destabilizing_. It's not crony capitalism, it's common sense for stability.
Insanity is not stability.
It's one thing to maintain some status quo (e.g., a small town / neighborhood is already established). It's another to encourage and reward bad decisions.
There's no reasonable justification for maintaining a pattern that is destined to fail. Again and again and again.
Is this what we considered smart and effective government?
Calling it crony capitalism is kind of silly. Do you expect the US to just abandon vast swaths of the country that are at risk of natural disasters? No homes along the Gulf coast, no homes in tornado alley, no homes along the earthquake faults along the West coast?
There is no equivalent to NFIP for tornado or earth quake insurance. We leave that to private insurers (and sometimes the states have programs).
That is one of the biggest arguments against the NFIP. It’s a specific subsidy that benefits some areas more than others (it’s also a deeply regressive policy).
In 2020 the house passed a supplemental bill to enable funds that can go to home replacement for Puerto Rican earthquake victims because the existing law doesn’t allow it.
The Senate never passed it and the President promised to veto it.
I have no crystal ball to know what might happen in the future but right now there is no earthquake equivalent to national flood insurance and recent history suggests the federal government doesn’t have the appetite to add it.
I didn't say this instance was Crony Capitalism per se. It's the idea that Uncle Sam gets too deep into too many things and yet the masses of voters believe we have free markets, Capitalism, etc.
What I expect is less insanity. Sure, help the people that were there. But for others to be coming in from the outside and exploiting the gov's offers, that's hardly reasonable and smart.
Furthermore, it's hypocritical - and costly - for the gov to say "climate change is coming it's going to raise the oceans..." and then in the next breath "here's taxpayer money to rebuild in a low-lying area because this isn't going to happen again." If we want people to take climate change seriously, then mixed signals like this aren't helping.
Ah there it is. The usual doomer mentality that is so common I want to vomit when I see it. A mixed-market economy is not "Crony Capitalism". Stop exaggerating for upvotes.
50 cents of every dollar earned by farmers in the US is paid by tax dollars buying excess food at fixed, over market prices. Lookup the strategic cheese reserve.
Does the government pay half your salary? They take half of mine.
At first, half sounds like hyperbole, I'll give you that.
But then think about all the various taxes we pay directly (e.g., gasoline, internet and phone services, etc.). Then add on the taxes that are embedded in the costs of any of the other goods we buy. It adds up.
Finally, if you consider The Fed a government agency, any time The Fed devalues your money (i.e., "prints" money and creates inflation) that's also all but a tax. That is, we have less to spend.
It might not be half, but it's certainly significantly more than your income tax rate.
If you live in a major metropolitan area, or own a home that has rapidly appreciated, well, it all adds up quickly.
Also consider: import taxes raise the price of goods, and thus are a wealth transfer from consumers to producers. Sugar is the classic example: import tariffs increase the effective tax burden of the lowest income quartile substantially, as they spend a larger percentage of their income on food. Anything with high fructose corn syrup, sweetener, or sugar is more expensive. And the corn farmers get that money.
Doomer? When did being honest and realistic become doomer?
It's as if you missed the college debt forgiveness. What was that? First, the gov stepped in, manipulated a market, increased demand, etc., and that eventuallyt went sideways.
And then it stepped in to pull the plug in that mistake. The POTUS promises the forgiveness program will make buying a home more afford...because the demand he created won't result in higher prices. Huh?
The only doom comes from those who can't face facts and keep their heads buried in the sand.
> It's as if you missed the college debt forgiveness. What was that? First, the gov stepped in, manipulated a market, increased demand, etc., and that eventuallyt went sideways.
No one with a fucking brain thinks that was a good idea. But that's what Democrats do.
Homeowners insurance in FL is a mess. The number 2 insurer is the state of FL (Citizens Property Insurance Corporation). I have no doubt they'll be the largest (and possibly only) in the years ahead.
Congress passed a bill seting the rates to be risk-adjusted in 2012, causing a 10x increase in rates in some areas. Congress then passed another bill in 2013 bringing back the 1968 rates under Obama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_Flood_Insurance_Affo...
Yup, government coming in and distorting the free market in all kinds of ways is very wasteful.
However, there are cases where the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
For example, it's nice to get your energy, metals, computers, industrial machines domestically instead of being at the mercy of a foreign country. Especially if the foreign country isn't ideologically aligned with yours.
in this example it is wasteful but it also decreases risks in the long term. The free market does not have to produce the most efficient solution, it just often does.
The free market is only able to optimize towards local maxima. That maxima might have plenty of downsides that don't affect its performance, but have negative effects on human beings and society that aren't captured by market mechanisms.
Is there a citation from this? From a quick search I can only find re-imbursements for state & local firefighters working on federal property. Typical homeowner's insurance covers fire already in most places at least.
Do you want your party in the news for shutting multiple whole cities down and forcing all of the poor people there to move from their ancestral homes? Regardless of the reality of it that's the kind of personal stories the news salivates over
Yeah, I would. An actual conservative would probably also like this, because the flip side to your point is "government stops spending massive (and wasteful) amounts of money supporting the rebuilding of an area constantly hit by massive hurricanes that's also due to be completely underwater within the next 50 years"
Republicans won't even agree that the climate change is happening much less agree that Florida will be underwater. They would probably be fine with getting rid of loss leading govt insurance programs in general though. I don't think any Democrat is going to go for the optics of pushing poor minorities out of their neighborhoods no matter what nature's plans are.
Federal disaster relief has completely different economic dynamics from backstop, risk-agnostic insurance. I don’t think anyone in this thread is suggesting we don’t give federal aid to Florida.
But to your point, yes we should also stop subsidizing water in the US southwest including California.
What about them? They do not seem comparable in scope to an explicit subsidy approved and funded by Congress before the loss even occurs.
No California homeowner is paying less for homeowner’s insurance because it is sold at below cost by the federal government. They may or may not get bailed out when a loss occurs, which is different from knowing that you will.
They don't, and I think they've changed the program recently to stop making repeated payouts on the same property. I'm not sure what they do instead, maybe pay you to move?
Despite that, most people in flood zones don’t have flood insurance.
> A 2020 survey conducted by the group found that 27% of all American homeowners insurance policyholders said they had flood insurance. And Wharton’s Risk Management and Decision Processes Center similarly found that, on average, 30% of homes in the highest-risk areas nationwide have flood coverage. [...] About 56% of consumers incorrectly assumed floods would be covered by their homeowners’ policies, according to a 2021 survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
> President Joe Biden declared nine counties disaster areas Thursday, making residents eligible for federal aid to pay for minor home repairs, short-term housing and other emergency costs. But of the 1.8 million households in those nine counties, only 29 percent have federal flood insurance, according to an analysis of government records by POLITICO’s E&E News. That leaves 1.3 million households at ground zero without federal flood coverage.
The damage numbers are big but that damage areas really are quite small. What area of Florida has has the closest time of period of two devastating hurricane strikes?
Is that time period measured in decades?
I’ve been in Florida for 25 years and haven't suffered a direct strike or flood damage yet. Plenty of close calls turned into hurricane parties but it would have been a pretty poor decision to leave because of fear of catastrophic loss and I’m guessing it’s the same for everyone here. If these houses being bought don’t expect catastrophic loss in the next 30 years then it’s as sane a decision to purchase as anywhere else.
> [...] it would have been a pretty poor decision to leave
The fact that market-based flood insurance would be too expensive for most people to purchase it in most places in Florida tells us a lot about the expected outcome, and "I haven't been too unlucky yet" isn't exactly an argument against that.
Hurricane activity didn't change much in the past 100 years[0]. Same for droughts and heavy precipitations. The only thing that is clearly on an up trend is temperature.
> looking at weather patterns and how over extreme weather events will increase
You know I keep hearing that repeated, yet after living through the last 43 hurricane seasons to date, I am not really seeing that blatant evidence of an increase in extreme weather events.
During hurricane season, we have hurricanes. Some years are worse than others, some storms are worse than others.
Flood is done by the government at set rates. So there is no reason to avoid building in a flood zone. Heck, you might be able to make a profit building in flood zones with this insurance.
You're not paying the premium based on the actual risk, but instead some fixed amount. So if a flood does destroy your house you collect the insurance money to re-build at a cheaper cost than it should've been relative to the risk... kind of like insurance arbitrage. It's still an additional policy, but there's wiggle room to make the policy holder profit.
Losing your house and possibly family members is a poor investment strategy. When you community is wiped up it can take years to rebuild it and it might not recovered entirely at all. You might have no good place to live since everyone is in the same boat in your area; your job might vanish if you were not remotely working (like retail or manufacturing); you might lose your savings before you eventually get some of it back, or might be unable to last that long.
It might be profitable to buy up property from people who are financially destitute and willing to sell at any price and then sell once everything is rebuilt, but that a long term investment. Also if you get multiple disasters at once (Florida was lucky to only be hit by 1 hurricane) you might wind up at the tail end of rebuilding like Puerto Rico and never be able to sell.
When I was a kid my town was devastated by an F5 tornado (Andover ks). Wiped out. Within a year the city was rebuilt and expanded. It continued to expand for 20+ years. This is a normal phenomenon.
"There could be another 9/11 in NYC and people would rush in and buy property around wherever the incident occurred. Why? Everyone saw how Tribeca turned into one of the hottest neighborhoods less than 10 years after 9/11"
NOTE: For those not familiar with New York City, Tribeca was the area just north of Ground Zero.
Except it seems pretty clear that these areas in Florida will continue to get hit by storms, while 9/11 level attacks can be expected to be pretty rare.
Shouldn't, in principle, insurance costs reflect risks? If they are comparably expensive but still affordable, then living in these places is still possible.
Costs and risks are so high huge portions of expensive Florida real estate aren’t insurable through private corporations. They simply don’t offer coverage. It’s the USG that picks up the tab and offers insurance.
The hurricane went straight over our head and we didn’t lose power nor internet. Cleaning up trees every 10 years is a trade off people are willing to deal with. The rest is better infrastructure which keeps improving constantly.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadhttps://www.fema.gov/press-release/20221022/federal-support-...
I think a lot of people get number blind when it comes to big numbers and government spending.
I think they should all be provided in a per capita basis.
Pandemic spending was about $45,000 per us adult.
Defense spending is about $3,000 per us adult
IAN relief is about $5 per us adult
I think the US pandemic spending was "only" around 5 trillion. For comparison, the defense budget over the same period (2019 to 2021) added up to over 2 trillion.
1. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/g-20-nations-have-now-deploy...
This excludes ~ 5 trillion in federal reserve spending as it pumped money into the economy, which isn't technically "government spending". Of this. ~2 trillion was spent maintaining repo and other rates for liquidity. About 1.5 trillion in mortgage backed securities were purchased, and about 2.5 trillion in long term securities were purchased.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Building_Code
Source: https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/FLRC2020P1
Additionally, people who hand wring about "America doesn't regulate" some thing that 48+ states regulate but isn't federally regulated would be put in the stocks and the townsfolk be provided with quick reference guides for various niche subsets of state law to throw at them.
Red states are self interested and won't say no to handouts as long as they receive them. Blue states believe we're "all in this together". So neither "side" has an incentive to raise the issue. Plus no one wants to be the guy who refused to help that poor down on their luck american who got their house blown away on the TV...
https://publicintegrity.org/environment/government-subsidize...
> Virtually no private market for flood insurance exists for most residential and commercial properties.
While the rest of the country may not want to subsidize coastal FL and TX, I doubt the issue could gain enough political steam to overcome advocates from beneficiaries of NFIP.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/29/554603161/epis...
tl;dl: They are the insurer of last resort. They have paid out 10x the value of some houses that are constantly flooding.
I'm a master of my areas of the federal code, I was not aware of this area!
As any true Scotsman knows.
Everywhere's a disaster zone now, we need to account for that, do our best to warn people, and do our best to help people get back to it. This is true here, and around the globe.
Mass migrations are _destabilizing_. It's not crony capitalism, it's common sense for stability.
And there are certainly places that are absolutely irredeemable and shouldn't have insurance. But this idea that letting people whose homes are destroyed in natural disasters need to be hung out to dry won't be worse than helping them get back onto their feet both for them and most likely for you is a bit odd.
If a specific area floods very frequently, it seems silly to keep bailing it out.
At some point we have to cut our losses and face reality and just stop investing there.
Edit: and then install retaining infrastructure in place of those houses and you stop future issues too for neighbors
Specifically, 1% of properties make up 25% of all claims.
Should we say that NYC should be abandoned cause Sandy hit 10 years ago and another might hit again one day?
And also I actually said in my post "there are areas we shouldn't".
However, Ft Myers is different from NYC in that sea level rises affect South Florida a hell of a lot more than Manhattan. A 10 foot sea level rise would only affect a small (but definitely not insignificant) part of Manhattan. That same rise would render all of Florida's coastlines (on both sides) uninhabitable. See link below:
https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/
NYC doesn't get hit anywhere close to as often as Florida's coasts do. It's not even comparable.
The insurers are leaving Florida in droves because their risk assessment teams understand that sea level rises and climate change is a significant financial risk to their operations in Florida, no matter how much Governor DeSantis wants to pretend otherwise.
It makes zero sense to insure areas that are going to be uninhabitable in our lifetimes, much less spend billions rebuilding them time and time again.
Disclaimer: I live in South Florida.
Disclaimer: Also in South Florida
However, the rapid rise in sea level and the fact that the state legislature is bound by law to not discuss it at all is also a factor. South Florida's coasts will be uninhabitable within 50 years, and if I'm an insurer, that's also on my mind.
Also, the efforts that I've seen are sub-par at best. Miami wants to build barrier islands that are a few feet above sea level in order to create a basin-type barrier around Brickell (the financial district where Ken Griffin is building a tower). Those are still in the early stages of bureaucratic hell and won't likely be built until it's way too late.
pun intended?
Then do it over a period of time. Reduce it to zero over, say, thirty years.
Just because something superficially resembles a good idea, doesn't make it a good idea. See also: corn subsidies.
Insanity is not stability.
It's one thing to maintain some status quo (e.g., a small town / neighborhood is already established). It's another to encourage and reward bad decisions.
There's no reasonable justification for maintaining a pattern that is destined to fail. Again and again and again.
Is this what we considered smart and effective government?
That is one of the biggest arguments against the NFIP. It’s a specific subsidy that benefits some areas more than others (it’s also a deeply regressive policy).
So it’s either subsidy upfront or on the backend?
FEMA specifically mentions that you can’t expect replacement housing costs to be paid in many of their documents: https://www.fema.gov/fact-sheet/earthquake-survivors-apply-f...
If SF sees 50% of houses uninhabitable and 12% have earthquake insurance you think the govt will shrug and say “too bad”?
The Senate never passed it and the President promised to veto it.
I have no crystal ball to know what might happen in the future but right now there is no earthquake equivalent to national flood insurance and recent history suggests the federal government doesn’t have the appetite to add it.
What I expect is less insanity. Sure, help the people that were there. But for others to be coming in from the outside and exploiting the gov's offers, that's hardly reasonable and smart.
Furthermore, it's hypocritical - and costly - for the gov to say "climate change is coming it's going to raise the oceans..." and then in the next breath "here's taxpayer money to rebuild in a low-lying area because this isn't going to happen again." If we want people to take climate change seriously, then mixed signals like this aren't helping.
Does the government pay half your salary? They take half of mine.
And I'd really like to understand how the government "takes half" of your salary. Either you're super rich (probably not), or you're exaggerating.
But then think about all the various taxes we pay directly (e.g., gasoline, internet and phone services, etc.). Then add on the taxes that are embedded in the costs of any of the other goods we buy. It adds up.
Finally, if you consider The Fed a government agency, any time The Fed devalues your money (i.e., "prints" money and creates inflation) that's also all but a tax. That is, we have less to spend.
It might not be half, but it's certainly significantly more than your income tax rate.
If you live in a major metropolitan area, or own a home that has rapidly appreciated, well, it all adds up quickly.
Also consider: import taxes raise the price of goods, and thus are a wealth transfer from consumers to producers. Sugar is the classic example: import tariffs increase the effective tax burden of the lowest income quartile substantially, as they spend a larger percentage of their income on food. Anything with high fructose corn syrup, sweetener, or sugar is more expensive. And the corn farmers get that money.
It's as if you missed the college debt forgiveness. What was that? First, the gov stepped in, manipulated a market, increased demand, etc., and that eventuallyt went sideways.
And then it stepped in to pull the plug in that mistake. The POTUS promises the forgiveness program will make buying a home more afford...because the demand he created won't result in higher prices. Huh?
The only doom comes from those who can't face facts and keep their heads buried in the sand.
No one with a fucking brain thinks that was a good idea. But that's what Democrats do.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/roofing-scams-florida-p...
However, there are cases where the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
For example, it's nice to get your energy, metals, computers, industrial machines domestically instead of being at the mercy of a foreign country. Especially if the foreign country isn't ideologically aligned with yours.
But to your point, yes we should also stop subsidizing water in the US southwest including California.
No California homeowner is paying less for homeowner’s insurance because it is sold at below cost by the federal government. They may or may not get bailed out when a loss occurs, which is different from knowing that you will.
> A 2020 survey conducted by the group found that 27% of all American homeowners insurance policyholders said they had flood insurance. And Wharton’s Risk Management and Decision Processes Center similarly found that, on average, 30% of homes in the highest-risk areas nationwide have flood coverage. [...] About 56% of consumers incorrectly assumed floods would be covered by their homeowners’ policies, according to a 2021 survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hundreds-thousands-flor...
> President Joe Biden declared nine counties disaster areas Thursday, making residents eligible for federal aid to pay for minor home repairs, short-term housing and other emergency costs. But of the 1.8 million households in those nine counties, only 29 percent have federal flood insurance, according to an analysis of government records by POLITICO’s E&E News. That leaves 1.3 million households at ground zero without federal flood coverage.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/01/hurricane-ian-will-...
The damage numbers are big but that damage areas really are quite small. What area of Florida has has the closest time of period of two devastating hurricane strikes? Is that time period measured in decades?
I’ve been in Florida for 25 years and haven't suffered a direct strike or flood damage yet. Plenty of close calls turned into hurricane parties but it would have been a pretty poor decision to leave because of fear of catastrophic loss and I’m guessing it’s the same for everyone here. If these houses being bought don’t expect catastrophic loss in the next 30 years then it’s as sane a decision to purchase as anywhere else.
The fact that market-based flood insurance would be too expensive for most people to purchase it in most places in Florida tells us a lot about the expected outcome, and "I haven't been too unlucky yet" isn't exactly an argument against that.
[0] https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
You know I keep hearing that repeated, yet after living through the last 43 hurricane seasons to date, I am not really seeing that blatant evidence of an increase in extreme weather events.
During hurricane season, we have hurricanes. Some years are worse than others, some storms are worse than others.
Seems minor?
It might be profitable to buy up property from people who are financially destitute and willing to sell at any price and then sell once everything is rebuilt, but that a long term investment. Also if you get multiple disasters at once (Florida was lucky to only be hit by 1 hurricane) you might wind up at the tail end of rebuilding like Puerto Rico and never be able to sell.
For now at least.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqXkYrdmjY&t=222s
"There could be another 9/11 in NYC and people would rush in and buy property around wherever the incident occurred. Why? Everyone saw how Tribeca turned into one of the hottest neighborhoods less than 10 years after 9/11"
NOTE: For those not familiar with New York City, Tribeca was the area just north of Ground Zero.