Guest AuthorIf you’ve lived in Florida for a while, you’ve heard stories of people repeatedly rebuilding homes damaged by storms because subsidized insurance and other government programs cover the cost.
Now, there’s a move to eliminate the practice, especially on homes that are not primary residences and structures that repeatedly get flooded.
So far, so good, but the process is ugly. It’s another reason to wince at the thought of Congress running anyone’s life.
Still, you need to watch it unfold, especially in Florida, where almost 40 percent of the nation’s flood insurance policies are located. The changes will raise premiums — some by thousands and thousands of dollars per year.
Waterfront real estate could become less desirable and local governments could lose lots of critical revenue from the seasonal homes. Plunging waterfront property values will send tremors through most beach communities.
“It has huge implications,” said Thomas Ruppert, a coastal planning specialist for the University of Florida’s Sea Grant program.
Federal flood insurance transformed Florida after it was enacted in 1968, the first time it was available since private insurers fled the market after a horrendous 1928 flood.
Since its inception, the National Flood Insurance Program has encouraged people to build more homes, bigger homes, fancier homes and many more businesses on the coast and in low-lying areas.
It’s a huge change from the days before flood insurance, when the beaches were dotted with mostly cinder-block buildings, the only type that owners could afford to lose to the inevitable storms.
Let’s stop here to acknowledge that flood insurance and beach development can be very valuable. They make beaches more accessible to more people. Also, development and tourism finance jobs for people who lack high-tech skills. The challenge is to make everything co-exist less expensively.
From 1968-85, the program relied heavily on taxpayer subsidies; then it spent about 20 years being largely self-supporting. However, now you and I once again are funding huge chunks of the program because of the expensive damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It’s about $25 billion in the hole. (Yes, that’s b-as-in-b billion dollars.)
Now come some twists.
The State of Mississippi is suing to stop flood insurance reform, arguing that FEMA, which administers the program, doesn’t have enough information to make the changes.
That’s probably true. Congress told FEMA to study the problem within six months, but Congress didn’t set aside money for a study, and then Hurricane Sandy came along and FEMA had more pressing matters.
Also, the study probably would take two years and require “a mammoth amount of data,” Ruppert said at a recent workshop in Pensacola on flood insurance issues.
Like Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us.
“It’s where we’re building,” Ruppert noted.
Maybe modest cinder-block houses will once again become the style on Florida beaches.
