What has happened down here
since the wind have changed
Clouds rolled in from the north
and it started to rain.
Rained real hard
and it rained for a real long time.
Six feet of water in the streets
of Evangeline.
--"Louisiana 1927," Randy Newman
What a summer it's been for the weather people. Houston and Florida are still cleaning up, and no telling when Puerto Rico will get power again. The images from that U.S. territory show our fellow Americans in terrible conditions. (Yes, by law, tradition and the grace of God, Puerto Ricans are natural-born citizens of the United States.)
There is going to be a lot of clean-up after these disasters. But the clean-up won't really be complete until our betters do something about the national Flood Insurance Program. Talk about man-made disasters, at least for the taxpayers.
Millions of people live on the coasts, and for a reason. It's the beach, baby. Some people are mountain people, some people are desert people, some people like the beach. Who can blame them?
But if your home floods, oh, 21 or 22 times while you're in it--and the taxpayers keep paying to clean it up and rebuild it--maybe you should think about relocating inland. Or at least to a neighborhood slightly above sea level.
Imagine tearing out the carpet every two years! We have some friends on the White River who have flooded twice in recent memory. But more than 20 times in three decades? You'd think they'd get the message.
But the message might get lost when Uncle Sucker keeps picking up the tab.
The Wall Street Journal reported that We the People have paid almost $2 million to repeatedly rebuild one house on the Texas coast. One house! It's not even worth half that cost. And of the 1.5 million or so homes covered by the national flood insurance, 2 percent have to be rebuilt over and over. That 2 percent accounts for about 30 percent of the claims paid out in the program's history. The paper also noted that almost half of those properties that flood multiple times have received more damage payments than the estimated worth of the house! Oy.
The government would rather buy out these owners, which only makes sense. But there is more than one obstacle. For example, the owners, who know a good thing when they take advantage of it.
There are also local governments, who see these nice beachfront homes as tax ATMs. If there are no expensive homes on the beach to tax, where'll they get the money? Not from pelicans and sand dollars.
Taking the lead in the matter, however, is Houston. Officials down there want to speed up the buyout process. They have requested $800 million in federal money to buy flood-prone properties. That's a lot of cash, but it will certainly be less expensive than spending millions of dollars on every flood--on perhaps only a handful of houses.
Once bought, the properties should be razed, cleaned up, and turned back to nature. Which would have another positive impact on folks living near the coasts: More unused land between the sea and our neighborhoods eases the impact that giant storms, and storm surges, have on We the Beach Loving People.
For all of us who enjoy the Emerald Coast, we know that there will always be big homes and bed-and-breakfasts along the shoreline. New Orleans, Miami and Houston will always be the targets for hurricanes. People will always live by the sea. And enjoy it they should.
But when taxpayers are on the hook for more damage repair, year after year, than the home is worth, it gives a whole new meaning to the term "underwater."
Editorial on 09/29/2017