I am saddened to see wealth envy trotted out here.

The logical basis of this argument is the fiscal one, vs. public policy, because the subsidy actually makes it EASIER to own a home in risky areas.

My homeowner's insurance more than doubled this year, despite the fact that in 23 years of home ownerhip, I've never made a claim. And I live on top of a mountain, nowhere near a flood zone.

There's no "wealth envy" here. People who live in beachfront homes should pay the cost.

PS I admire people who make it in the world and earn a lot of money, providing they aren't selling children into sex slavery, etc., to do it.

I'm guessing the reason is less Malibu movie stars and more poor people who live in flood plains because historically that is where their neighborhoods were built. You may disagree with that, but it's not about subsidizing the wealthy it is about helping the truly fucked.

I'm sure it's true that there are more poor people than wealthy living in flood plains. This isn't just rich people with beach houses or weekend homes on the river; it's people in clapboard houses that live near a creek that flash floods once a decade. Either way, though, I'm against it. If you live in a flood plain, your insurance costs shouldn't be the same as someone who lives on a hill. And the person on the hill is subsidizing the person in the flood plain. We shouldn't encourage people to live in a flood plain. I know I can get a house 20% cheaper if "just the lower story" is in the flood plain. I'm not going to buy one because that's stupid. And, if you've ever been to a house after it flooded, you realize that no amount of money is going to make up for all of the photos and sentimental items that are lost. It's not worth the risk.

Let's remember here that Congress can't cut anything if there are too many votes at stake.

Homeowners could adapt to higher insurance rates, but they leverage their votes/political power to grab an added piece of the commons.

"because historically that is where their neighborhoods were built"

An error that will never be corrected as long as these idiotic subsidies exist.

The statement's not even historically accurate, at least not in the Southeast U.S. (New Orleans excepted, because, well, it's New Orleans). Rich people lived on the river because that's where the good farm land was. Poor people lived up in the rocky, hard-to-grow-anything hills.

Eh- there are a lot of (originally) poor and working-class neighborhoods near creeks in cities (like Austin and San Antonio) in central and south texas... and they get nearly wiped out every 15-25 years.

Sorry but if you can't afford the insurance to cover flood damage then leave; it will save money for the majority of the poor who live in non-flood plane areas. That will save more on insurance and taxes for poor people than federal insurance.

I like these:

http://www.onlyheartsclub.com/

Eh- there are a lot of (originally) poor and working-class neighborhoods near creeks in cities (like Austin and San Antonio) in central and south texas... and they get nearly wiped out every 15-25 years.

Posted by: ahw at March 6, 2014 1:16 PM

The reasons for people living near waterways have little or nothing to do with rich verses poor.

Poorer areas always tend to be the older areas of a town and communities formed along waterways for a variety of practical reasons.
First. Transportation. Even the rich walked a lot, a hundred and fifty years ago, and businesses would be located near the wharf for convenient offloading of goods delivered via the oceans and the waterways.
People that owned and worked in businesses located on those waterways needed to be within easy walking distance of their jobs.
As older industrial / commercial areas age, the people that live there tend to get poorer.

The beach resort phenomena took off in the 19th century. Most those places were always second homes for the rich, who knew better than to hang around during hurricane season.

Im sure the government flood insurance served a real purpose, when it was first instituted, but like the farm subsidies, that original purpose disappeared a long time ago.

I am always amazed, that most people do little thinking about why towns and cities developed the way they did, and somehow just breeze right past the fact that the suburbs only became possible for the middle class with the wide availability of cars, and trucks.

Maybe where I live is something of an exception. The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers have long been known for bad and frequent flooding, and there weren't that many communities that grew up along them prior to the advent of TVA and the dam system. Where I live in northeast Alabama, there is still relatively little development right on the river because most of it is controlled by TVA as flood plain. (And yes, it does flood some, even with the dams.) On the other hand, bottom land was and still is valuable as farm land because the soil is good, as opposed to the Appalacian hills which tend to have only a thin layer of topsoil over rock. So prior to the 20th century, the poor mostly lived up in the hills because that was the land they could afford.

Maybe where I live is something of an exception. The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers have long been known for bad and frequent flooding,

@cousinDave. There are exceptions everywhere.

The bottom land along the rivers is good farmland, and some rivers certainly flood more frequently than others,

If you travel a lot in Europe you will see a lot of walls designed to protect towns on the German rivers from frequent flooding.

As I understand it, the TVA was created because of those problems in the south. Part of the solution was lots of dams.