Posted on 09/19/2016 4:30:17 PM PDT by LambSlave
I found that in 2009 Douglas County Nevada tried to sue FEMA because their flood models were grossly incorrect, which resulted in many properties being incorrectly classified as requiring flood insurance that were not in flood zones. Reading around the net, it seems this is an endemic problem, and from speaking to surveyors online, they claim that 75 -85% of all these claims that they have worked are overturned-- the properties are in fact not in flood zones. Worse, the banks take advantage of this and buy insurance for the mortgage holder at outrageous rates. Both of these things happened to me, I fought it for over six months, and today I won. But I am still so incredibly pissed. It is obvious even to someone with Obama's intellect that my property is not in a flood zone, but I had to spend over $500 dollars to get it surveyed, plus buy ridiculously priced insurance during the six months it took to sort this out. This has happened to millions of people across the USA, almost all whites in rural areas, while mysteriously the real at risk muti-billion dollar seaside resort properties continue to get over. Any lawyers out there or those in a position to know if anyone is considering a nationwide class action lawsuit against FEMA? Anyway that's my rant.
i walked a friend through the process online with FEMA. After we got the elevation certificate and referenced the state map showing their home it took less than two months to get the LOMA. that was presented to the mortgage company to start the insurance premium refunds. You can go back two years.
Sincerely wish you the best of luck with your Elevation Cert. Do you know what the “full rate” will be for the insurance (Don’t remember the technical name, but they keep raising it annually until it hits this rate)? Around here it was over a thousand dollars PER MONTH for a $200k property. So they are getting near full replacement cost for a 50% likely event. Of course the homes became worthless; who wants to buy a house with an insurance rate higher than the mortgage. Again, the whole thing is a criminal scam.
FEMA does not take flood gates into consideration or do they when factoring premiums? Any area that is aided by flood gates/canals “should have reduced premiums.
Worse, even if it is payed off already you can't sell it to someone who needs a mortgage because they can't afford the insurance, which may be higher than the mortgage. This is happening to actual people, their main asset goes from $400k to worthless overnight because now it is in a flood zone. It doesn't matter that there has been no flooding there since the days of Noah, it doesn't matter that it wasn't factored in when they purchased the house. It is exactly the same as if you bought a $40k car, and the EPA said your car was identified as a "high risk polluter" so you have to now pay a ten thousand dollar per year tax. You would never have paid $40k for it knowing that, and now you can't sell it.
I am in this situation right now. Can’t afford the surveyor. House on a hill well above the highest flood in the area.Even the 1937 flood didn’t threaten the house.
FEMA wants $800 to survey,private surveyors charge $1500 or more. Who trusts govt to do right?
Well it’s like Obama care....
Although the following information concerning FEMA will probably not be helpful to anybody at this point in time, you might find it interesting.
Patriots need to get in the habit of first checking the constitutionality of any action of the corrupt federal government against the fed’s constitutionally limited powers, Congress’s Article I, Section 8-limited powers the best place to start looking. If patriots don't find one or more clauses that reasonably justifies the fed’s action, the action is unconstitutional.
Although FEMA is arguably a good idea that the states should consider expressly amending to the Constitution, unless the feds have purchased land in compliance with either the Constitution’s Clause 17 of Section 8 mentioned above, or the eminent domain clause of the 5th Amendment, since the states have never constitutionally delegated to the feds the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for emergency management purposes on INTRAstate property, the land is hands-off to the feds imo.
In other words, the post-17th Amendment ratification feds wrongly established FEMA outside the framework of the Constitution imo.
In fact, expressing themselves in wide language, previous generations of state sovereignty-respecting justices had basically indicated that federal agencies (my wording), FEMA in this example, with no express constitutional authority to justify their existence, are prohibited.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Remember in November !
Patriots need to support Trump / Pence by also electing a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to support Trump’s vision for making America great again for everybody, but will also put a stop to unconstitutonal federal taxes and likewise unconstitutional inteference in state affairs as evidenced by unconstitutional FEMA.
Note that such a Congress will also probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
I went through this whole thing. My mother-in-law’s home is some two hundred feet above the nearest creek or drainage but they put her right in the flood zone which required ridiculous insurance rates. This was right after Katrina. I think that they expand flood zones not based on science but based on how much money they have squandered redistributing wealth after any natural event. I got her moved out of the flood zone after wasting a lot of time and money on it. If she had flooding two hundred feet above the creek we would all be in a lot of trouble and FEMA couldn’t help.
You can't sue the king! but your second idea has merit. Personally, I think that tar and feathers should come back in style.
I definitely wouldn’t trust FEMA, but yeah it was an expensive and time consuming process.
To me it looks like they literally draw the lines to just barely “catch” the most houses, even though it means deviating a good bit from the actual base elevation. Even a corner is good enough, and the resolution they are using for contour lines means the house is really sitting way above elevation.
Great write up! There are different forms of these Global Warming scams in industry.
o Carbon fraud
o Flooding fraud
The transport industry has smog scams where small business is extorted or shut down for not meeting a new “arbitrary and capricious” smog scams. It is tragic.
These alphabet govt agencies eg EPA are fiefdoms until shut down.
Thanks for sharing.
I’ve never dealt with an area with floodgates. I have no idea.
The only “good” news is possibility of going back two years if prove they are wrong.
This happened to me as well. It was about 10 years ago. It was about 3 months before I was putting my house on the market so I had to get it done. I went and talked to the county surveyor and he said that the Feds arbitrarily decided to change their requirements but didn’t bother to actually go out and do a survey. They were unaware that the developer who had done my subdivision about 7 years previous had graded the entire area up several feet. I had to get the survey thing done at a cost of about $700 if I remember correctly so I could sell my house. All of my neighbors had to do the same and man were they pissed.
Getting a letter from the Feds telling you that you need flood insurance right before you put your house on the market in a so-so market will definitely up the pucker factor by considerable measure. Reason number 1 million plus why I hate the federal government. I discussed suing them for the cost and the time and stress from their little move but my attorney buddy told me I was nuts.
Definitely not nuts, there are many people who feel the same way and for good reason. For the government to incur this much potential pain and loss, they need to have damned good evidence, not just change the lines on a map with NO actual measurements or simulation.
He just said I was nuts for thinking about trying to take on the evil empire in court. He said kind of what someone else said upthread about the government having the deepest pockets on earth and all the time in the world. It is one of the things that has really peeved me about the Obama administration and all of the EOs. They do things that blatanly violate the constitution, yet it is up to the states, legal foundations or the individual to use their resources and time to fight back. Kind of shoots “of the people, by the people and for the people” right in the ass, doesn’t it?
I was thinking about this after I posted and remembered that one of the local news stations had done a couple of stories about what happened. It actually affected a couple of other subdivisions besides mine so it got some traction. I called the reporterette and she tried to talk me into going on camera. I decided not to since I was about ready to put my house on the market and I didn’t want people to look at my house and say “oh this house belongs to the fat guy who is pissed at the government about flood insurance” and move along to the next listing.
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