5 ms·

I wonder what it take to convince people some of the coast of Florida, much of California and other disaster areas are uninhabitable. I definitely wouldn't want

I wonder what it take to convince people some of the coast of Florida, much of California and other disaster areas are uninhabitable. I definitely wouldn't want to live in a home that is not insured or have insurance that is exceedingly expensive. Also places in the middle of the desert that are going to literally run out of water.

mschuster91 3y ago
The problem is that a lot of wealth is tied up in the real estate markets of these areas. If the government were to declare them uninhabitable, it would have to pay out at least some compensation to the owners, and that would be a huge amount of money, politically completely unviable.
- nostrademons 3y ago
  Wouldn't necessarily be the government, it could also be the market. After a disaster came through, you'd likely have a lot of property owners that don't have the money to rebuild their property. It just becomes abandoned land with ruined houses on them, much like large swaths of Detroit or New Orleans.
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    Which swathes of New Orleans do you claim are still like this? I live in the Lower Ninth Ward for the record.
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      I was thinking of the Lower 9th Ward, but was going off citations that it was > 50% vacant in 2015. It looks like it was largely rebuilt between 2015-2022.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Historically it is viable. The trick is to affect a small minority at a time. For example, if you live in a flood zone (and have a federally backed mortgage), you are required to buy flood insurance. Then you can expand the flood zones to include more properties. This scenario is a real example that happened around 2010 or so.
nostrademons 3y ago
It'd take their uninsured home getting destroyed when they don't have any money for a replacement. That's usually how market mechanisms work: you can no longer do something when you run out of money for it. (Also, I'm not convinced that the vast majority of houses in California and Florida are economically uninsurable. There's a wide variety in actual climate risk: houses in the middle of an urban area don't realistically have much more risk from wildfires than they do from an ordinary house fire, while houses in Central Florida are, as another commenter mentioned, much less vulnerable to hurricanes than houses on the coast. As I mentioned to another commenter, the rational response to everyone leaving an area, if it's not actually economically unviable, is to start your own insurance company and fill the void they left. There may be a business opportunity for startup insurers with better risk models than the insurers that are leaving the area.)
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  When the house is destroyed, the government must then buy the parcel and lock it up so it’s never developed again. Otherwise, someone else will build and come with their hand out when the next catastrophic event occurs. https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20230502/fact-sheet-acquisition-property-after-flood-event https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20230502/fact-sheet-acqui... https://theconversation.com/when-homes-flood-who-retreats-and-to-where-we-mapped-thousands-of-fema-buyouts-and-found-distance-and-race-play-a-role-206590 https://theconversation.com/when-homes-flood-who-retreats-an...
  - acdha 3y ago
    I’ve thought that ever since I was a kid reading news reports about the trailer park at the mouth of a local river getting junked every few years when Southern California got more rain than average. Let FEMA help people, sure, but it should be a one-time conversion to national forest not an “act of god” which happens multiple times per decade.
- bombcar 3y ago
  What happens is the insurers are only allowed to insure by large areas (perhaps the entire state) so they normally handle the uninsurable areas by charging insanely high for those places - but that is being prohibited. So they either need to be allowed to let prices float or declare areas smaller than a state as “unisurable”.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
I spent part of the summer in Fort Myers, where Hurricane Ian destroyed huge portions of the coastal areas and barrier islands (most of Sanibel and Fort Myers Beach). Most of a year later these islands look like a war zone - they're still knocking down buildings and rebuilding miles of structures. If another hurricane hits in the next two years, I just don't see any of those built-up coastal areas being economically viable to rebuild a second time: they will just have to become lightly-inhabited nature preserves. And we're still only halfway through this year's storm season, with huge amounts of energy stored up in record-warm gulf waters.
jfim 3y ago
The convincing will happen by itself. A typical condition for getting a mortgage is to get property insurance, and if getting a new insurance policy issued is not possible, then the property is de facto unsellable to anyone that would require a mortgage.

mschuster91 3y ago

The problem is that a lot of wealth is tied up in the real estate markets of these areas. If the government were to declare them uninhabitable, it would have to pay out at least some compensation to the owners, and that would be a huge amount of money, politically completely unviable.

nostrademons 3y ago
Wouldn't necessarily be the government, it could also be the market. After a disaster came through, you'd likely have a lot of property owners that don't have the money to rebuild their property. It just becomes abandoned land with ruined houses on them, much like large swaths of Detroit or New Orleans.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Which swathes of New Orleans do you claim are still like this? I live in the Lower Ninth Ward for the record.
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    I was thinking of the Lower 9th Ward, but was going off citations that it was > 50% vacant in 2015. It looks like it was largely rebuilt between 2015-2022.
giantg2 3y ago
Historically it is viable. The trick is to affect a small minority at a time. For example, if you live in a flood zone (and have a federally backed mortgage), you are required to buy flood insurance. Then you can expand the flood zones to include more properties. This scenario is a real example that happened around 2010 or so.

nostrademons 3y ago

It'd take their uninsured home getting destroyed when they don't have any money for a replacement. That's usually how market mechanisms work: you can no longer do something when you run out of money for it. (Also, I'm not convinced that the vast majority of houses in California and Florida are economically uninsurable. There's a wide variety in actual climate risk: houses in the middle of an urban area don't realistically have much more risk from wildfires than they do from an ordinary house fire, while houses in Central Florida are, as another commenter mentioned, much less vulnerable to hurricanes than houses on the coast. As I mentioned to another commenter, the rational response to everyone leaving an area, if it's not actually economically unviable, is to start your own insurance company and fill the void they left. There may be a business opportunity for startup insurers with better risk models than the insurers that are leaving the area.)

toomuchtodo 3y ago
When the house is destroyed, the government must then buy the parcel and lock it up so it’s never developed again. Otherwise, someone else will build and come with their hand out when the next catastrophic event occurs. https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20230502/fact-sheet-acquisition-property-after-flood-event https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20230502/fact-sheet-acqui... https://theconversation.com/when-homes-flood-who-retreats-and-to-where-we-mapped-thousands-of-fema-buyouts-and-found-distance-and-race-play-a-role-206590 https://theconversation.com/when-homes-flood-who-retreats-an...
- acdha 3y ago
  I’ve thought that ever since I was a kid reading news reports about the trailer park at the mouth of a local river getting junked every few years when Southern California got more rain than average. Let FEMA help people, sure, but it should be a one-time conversion to national forest not an “act of god” which happens multiple times per decade.
bombcar 3y ago
What happens is the insurers are only allowed to insure by large areas (perhaps the entire state) so they normally handle the uninsurable areas by charging insanely high for those places - but that is being prohibited. So they either need to be allowed to let prices float or declare areas smaller than a state as “unisurable”.

matthewdgreen 3y ago

I spent part of the summer in Fort Myers, where Hurricane Ian destroyed huge portions of the coastal areas and barrier islands (most of Sanibel and Fort Myers Beach). Most of a year later these islands look like a war zone - they're still knocking down buildings and rebuilding miles of structures. If another hurricane hits in the next two years, I just don't see any of those built-up coastal areas being economically viable to rebuild a second time: they will just have to become lightly-inhabited nature preserves. And we're still only halfway through this year's storm season, with huge amounts of energy stored up in record-warm gulf waters.

jfim 3y ago

The convincing will happen by itself. A typical condition for getting a mortgage is to get property insurance, and if getting a new insurance policy issued is not possible, then the property is de facto unsellable to anyone that would require a mortgage.