We sure need some here.
FReepathon Day 50!
Posted on 11/19/2012 12:58:18 PM PST by SeekAndFind
I'm all for people pitching in to rebuild after a hurricane. But should the taxpayer be subsidizing the rebuilding, especially when an area has proven to be disaster-prone?
New York Times:
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DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. - Even in the off season, the pastel beach houses lining a skinny strip of sand here are a testament to the good life. They are also a monument to the generosity of the federal government.
The western end of this Gulf Coast island has proved to be one of the most hazardous places in the country for waterfront property. Since 1979, nearly a dozen hurricanes and large storms have rolled in and knocked down houses, chewed up sewers and water pipes and hurled sand onto the roads.
Yet time and again, checks from Washington have allowed the town to put itself back together.
Across the nation, tens of billions of tax dollars have been spent on subsidizing coastal reconstruction in the aftermath of storms, usually with little consideration of whether it actually makes sense to keep rebuilding in disaster-prone areas. If history is any guide, a large fraction of the federal money allotted to New York, New Jersey and other states recovering from Hurricane Sandy - an amount that could exceed $30 billion - will be used the same way.
Tax money will go toward putting things back as they were, essentially duplicating the vulnerability that existed before the hurricane.
"We're Americans, damn it," said Robert S. Young, a North Carolina geologist who has studied the way communities like Dauphin Island respond to storms. "Retreat is a dirty word."
This island community of roughly 1,300 year-round residents has become a symbol of that reflexive policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
While not all of those who own beachfront property can be considered rich, the fact is, there are few more valuable parcels of land in the country than some of the ocean view houses and cottages that are continually battered by storms.
The same holds true for communities along rivers that are flood prone. A river town that experiences a flood every one hundred years is one thing. But some communities get flooded out a couple of times a decade. The question is the same; should the government - and our tax dollars - continuously subsidize those who live in disaster prone areas?
Because the rich are able to afford the most desirable properties which many happen to be close to nature. Mother nature has been known to be a bitch on occasion though.
In the Midwest, the Corp of Engineers mandates you have to leave after the flood wipes you out.
Unless you are a large town, or rich. Then the money keeps flowing.
The madness that is our disaster management policy is a sore point for me.
Its a government program! What could go wrong?
Time to evacuate San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc.
They move back in as the water goes down.
You never hear them complain ~ and as far as I know they don't have insurance, or sewers, or high quality public streets, or electric power ~ this area also has the highest rate of violent crime in Marion county, and that's saying something!
The only federal initiative there is to fight crime. Locally there's an initiative to tear down totally destroyed buildings ~ some of them have been flooding out for over a century and really could fall over at any time.
Old timers will tell you this was a great place to live ~ provided you had a boat, and no basement!
Because we are now photo op nation, and no good resolution can stand against the stampede of pander bears when there are tearjerking visuals to be had.
There was a neighborhood in Pittsburgh called Ansonia Place. Just a handful of streets alongside a creek, down in a valley. It would routinely flood out every other year. Eventually the city realized that it would be more cost effective to just buy everyone out and bulldoze it.
People should live wherever they CHOOSE...but I should not have to subsidize their CHOICES.
Right. As long as a private insurance company will underwrite it and they keep the premium paid they can build anywhere they want. I don’t care.
Insurance drops um or they don’t pay up. Don’t come crying to me. I live lake side, but my basement floor is 25 feet higher than the lake water level. And there is a TON of flat land around me.
If the water gets to my basement someone had better have built an ark.
Why? So someone can get re-elected.
Insurance for these properties is actually another scam.
The states generally don’t allow the companies to figure costs by the actuarial risk of individual companies. They require them to lump in a large number of much lesser risk properties so those with the highest risk don’t get dinged so badly.
Here in Florida, the risk is wildly disproportionate for the actual waterfront property where the richest people live. If they had to pay the actual cost of insurance for their property, few of these locations would be developed.
So the state enforces a “coastal zone” of some number of miles, can’t remember how many, inland. All of these houses are lumped together and the rate calculated accordingly.
So the middle class or poor property owners two miles inland and 60 feet above sea level pay a massive subsidy so the rich guy can have affordable insurance on his 10,000 SF waterfront mansion.
Its like idiots that build on a flood plain and then cry when it floods....no insurance for the stupid...
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