Whether sea level rises or falls there will always be flooding storms.
People who build/buy homes on the water are taking a known risk & should pay a hefty insurance premium if they can get insurance at all.
After Hurricane Fredrick in 1979, most of the homes & businesses on the Alabama beaches were destroyed or heavily damaged. There was some talk that insurance companies would no longer insure buildings on the water side of the beach road which was about 100 yards from the water line. Note that the buildings on the beach change the wind patterns & flatten the sand dunes that mitigate the storm surges.
This is exactly what should happen - no more building on the water. The state should have “eminent domained” the entire beach front & left it as a public recreation area. This could be done gradually as homes & businesses where destroyed by future storms, paying the owners fair market value for the property.
Instead, they jacked up insurance rates for the entire state, & allowed the homes, hotels, & businesses back on the beach. Many of these, since Fredrick, have had severe damage, multiple times, from numerous storms, driving insurance premiums sky high for everyone else. Still they are allowed to rebuild their expensive homes, tourist businesses, & now, high rise hotels, subsidized by people who derive no benefit from their existence.
It is redistribution, pure & simple, from the poor & middle class to the rich.
Thats my take as well.
Going to OBX every now and then I’m still struck by how, driving up from the bridge to Duck or Corolla, the left side (more inland) has old, small cinderblock houses that are built like bunkers whilt the right side (on the beach) is wall to wall party mansions and similarly designed/constructed hotels and condo buildings.
The problem is:
NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCE
It is subsidized by everyone that pays taxes. I believe that once a geographic location on the coast or a river flood plain makes a claim, that location should NEVER be paid again under a National Flood Insurance policy. It should go into the title of the property. IF that happened, insurance companies would be so high that only the richest people could afford to live on the beach. Most insurance companies would choose not to cover those properties.
Instead of three strikes and your out, it would be one.
Now, if your beach house gets destroyed, you just rebuild on the same spot. The thing that has changed is the cost of construction on the shoreline. Putting pilings 30 feet or more into the ground makes the foundation of the property too expensive for most people to rebuild.