Florida - Should they even rebuild?

[Bad Dingo]

This is just a random thought that I keep having when I see the pictures of the devastation of Hurricane Ian.  Does it even make sense for houses and businesses to be rebuilt on land that will most likely be hit again and again by increasingly devastating storms and rising sea levels?

I can't imagine how hard it would be to get insurance on a house after it being completely destroyed in a storm.

Hopefully this conversation isn't too soon, I feel so bad for the people who lost everything.

[Bad Dingo]

I just found an article discussing this:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/02/hurricane-ian-risks-rebuilding-vulnerable-areas

"The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator, Deanne Criswell, asked Americans on Sunday “to make informed decisions” about rebuilding in vulnerable areas hit by natural disasters intensified by the climate crisis."

"It has been widely reported that only about 18% of Fort Myers residents had purchased flood insurance. “If you live near water or where it rains it can certainly flood, and we have seen that in multiple storms this year,” Criswell said. “If you live near water – anywhere near water – you should certainly purchase flood insurance.”"

[Velar Fricative]

I've been thinking a lot about this not just because of Ian, but because of climate change in general and what I'm seeing locally.

Basically, developers have long resumed rebuilding in areas destroyed by Sandy. They're putting stilts on the bottom of the houses, but come the fuck on now. OTOH, we have a seriously affordable housing crisis and whether we like it or not, many flood zone/coastal areas that are prone to impacts from bad weather or worse are also the places many people can afford to live. So of course people are buying these risky homes.

I don't how the eff to solve this, because the solutions I assumed would help just aren't helping. Our collective memories here in America suck.

[AJL]

And if those residents don't rebuild or won't be allowed to rebuild, what happens then? Where do they go? Who buys their land? There is no good answer.

[dancelnow]

There is no way that people are going to stop building on the coasts. The focus needs to be on resilient building standards and actually enforcing those. It won’t be cheap though, but neither is getting insured in disaster prone areas. Unfortunately, insurance companies are good at discriminating and charging appropriately for engineered homes. We actually chose not to add hurricane clips when we recently did a full residing because insurance wouldn’t value it and we couldn’t quantify the benefit of storm damage with and without them. We’re about 500 feet from the normal tide line.

For areas prone to flooding, require homes to be elevated. And make everyone purchase flood insurance or revamp the program completely. You can’t run an insurance program where only the high risk people opt in. My main home and our long term rentals are all in flood prone areas and it’s amazing how many people don’t buy insurance just because the antiquated maps say they aren’t required to.

[dancelnow]

Oct 3, 2022 13:06:58 GMT -5 AJL said:

And if those residents don't rebuild or won't be allowed to rebuild, what happens then? Where do they go? Who buys their land? There is no good answer.

I do like the buyout programs that returns some of these areas to watersheds like Houston is doing. But I question how long those restrictions will stay in place or if it will end up developed again.

[rubytue]

I think dancelnow is on the right track. While there are some areas that probably shouldn’t be rebuilt, a lot can be said about how well the newer building codes have held up. Take Punta Gorda, which was revenged by Charley. I’ve seen a couple reports talking about how well they fared with the places that have been rebuilt. And my ILs relatively new (~4 years) neighborhood looks so good they didn’t believe it was actually post-hurricane satellite images. They are slightly inland, but under 2 miles from the sanibel causeway. 

If you build on the sand, beachfront, maybe not. 

[icedcoffee]

I've been thinking a lot about this. I have friend who lives on a canal (bay? idk you get my point lol) in Naples and their house is essentially a total loss. They only bought about 7 years ago. And it's like...they knew this was a possibility when they purchased it. These hurricanes have been getting much worse for at least that long.

They have enough resources to just pickup and move, but then what?

Idk. It feels like a losing battle. But it's so complicated.

[pixy0stix]

Oct 3, 2022 13:06:58 GMT -5 AJL said:

And if those residents don't rebuild or won't be allowed to rebuild, what happens then? Where do they go? Who buys their land? There is no good answer.

This is where I get really pissed off at our government and our own selves. We've had DECADES to come up with the answer, but instead have kicked the can down the road and here we are. We can't keep putting this off and letting people do what they want. I was reading that some of those places were only recently built up. FL should have had a plan in place where that land wasn't developable. People are going to lose this land because the government didn't stop them, and the people themselves didn't think about whether they should build there or not.

[pixy0stix]

Oct 3, 2022 13:08:19 GMT -5 dancelnow said:

There is no way that people are going to stop building on the coasts. The focus needs to be on resilient building standards and actually enforcing those. It won’t be cheap though, but neither is getting insured in disaster prone areas. Unfortunately, insurance companies are good at discriminating and charging appropriately for engineered homes. We actually chose not to add hurricane clips when we recently did a full residing because insurance wouldn’t value it and we couldn’t quantify the benefit of storm damage with and without them. We’re about 500 feet from the normal tide line.

For areas prone to flooding, require homes to be elevated. And make everyone purchase flood insurance or revamp the program completely. You can’t run an insurance program where only the high risk people opt in. My main home and our long term rentals are all in flood prone areas and it’s amazing how many people don’t buy insurance just because the antiquated maps say they aren’t required to.

The answer is to stop building on the coasts. Many of these areas are going to be flooded by the sea. Ain't no resilience planning for buildings with that. The storm surge in many areas is going to be at permanent height.

[aprilsails]

I’m not on a coast but our large river has had 500 year floods for I think three years running now. One of the three local jurisdictions that fronts the river has just started buying up houses, demolishing them, and turning the lots into parkland.

My second cousin who has a waterfront house on the river in the rural area could not rebuild or obtain insurance unless he raised his house. It’s now 2m up on piles with unfinished storage space underneath. I don’t know how he accesses it for the weekend/week of flooding each year. His entire lot goes underwater.

I lived on a tiny river growing up and I remember the damage and detritus the annual spring thaw would cause to the far end of our lot. I can’t imagine cleaning that up every year over an entire acre.

[minzy]

I have been thinking a lot about this too, and after reading The Water Will Come a few years ago.

bookshop.org/books/the-water-will-come-rising-seas-sinking-cities-and-the-remaking-of-the-civilized-world/9780316260206?gclid=Cj0KCQjwkOqZBhDNARIsAACsbfKZtquBso1uqKFEr0asO9woPi-jZagVG8eYkzZW0Hj-5H-SCq4sBN0aAnFREALw_wcB

There was also a segment on this idea in All We Can Save/featured on How to Save a Planet (and read by Julia Louis Dreyfus) -
gimletmedia.com/amp/shows/howtosaveaplanet/kwhrbzr

I have family in Naples and they mentioned that the buildings in Fort Myers that did better last week were (generally) the ones with garages on the first level or two. Others that started with condos on the first floor are as good as gone.

[Bad Dingo]

Land Risk Analysis by Climate Central:
assets.ctfassets.net/cxgxgstp8r5d/2KKeTjnqbFelWrZalnPeRR/df60ab0cf494cb342e1c28b0f58eaea7/Climate_Central_Sinking_Tax_Base_National_Report.pdf

"What can be done to increase resilience and reduce risks to property and lives, communities, counties, and states have several
options. They can:
• Adjust land use policies to encourage development outside the risk zones, and to limit new growth in the
risk zones.
• Participate in the National Flood Insurance Program and the Community Rating System incentives to help
improve financial resilience for residents, indirectly supporting the tax base.
• Use science-based analysis to inform investments in infrastructure interventions, such as improving
stormwater systems, raising roadways, building levees, or improving coastal wetlands, that will, at least for
a time, help protect the tax base.
• Educate and inform taxpayers so that they may constructively participate in adapting the local economy
and tax base to the rising sea.
Ultimately, reducing and eventually eliminating carbon pollution will prevent the problems identified in this
report from getting much worse." (bolding is mine)

My thoughts - Government really has to get involved, and the chances of red states doing that seem pretty slim.

1. Limit building in areas that are at very high risk of destruction due to climate risks.
2. Gov't should make people whole for land that may not be able to be used - with particular focus on people who lost their primary home.
3. Increase affordable housing in areas less prone to disaster.

[cattledogkisses]

Oct 3, 2022 13:24:39 GMT -5 rubytue said:

I think dancelnow is on the right track. While there are some areas that probably shouldn’t be rebuilt, a lot can be said about how well the newer building codes have held up. Take Punta Gorda, which was revenged by Charley. I’ve seen a couple reports talking about how well they fared with the places that have been rebuilt. And my ILs relatively new (~4 years) neighborhood looks so good they didn’t believe it was actually post-hurricane satellite images. They are slightly inland, but under 2 miles from the sanibel causeway. 

If you build on the sand, beachfront, maybe not. 

I agree there's something to be said for newer building codes, at least when it comes to wind damage.  My parents house was built in 2017, and seems to have escaped relatively unscathed.  Their friends in the same area whose homes are 10-15 years older all sustained major damage. 

Those new building codes wouldn't have helped with flooding though... the water came within a foot of my parents door, but thankfully didn't go in.  They were lucky.  (They don't live near the beach; the water was from the Myakka River flooding.)

Unfortunately Florida is really flat/low elevation, so water doesn't have to rise much to cause catastrophic flooding.

[rubytue]

cattledogkisses, so true. They can design for wind. Water infiltration is much harder. My ILs report that there is a high water mark line (or what appears to be one) about 2 inches up their sliding glass door. Somehow, no problems in their house. But across the street, the houses look fine except the 4 inches of much that got in. Was it luck alone? Weee the door designed to support a bit of water pressure but not as much as they got across the street? Who knows.

[waverly]

I always thought that houses on the beach and canals were more expensive not less expensive because that was coveted property. A house on a beautiful beach is probably going to be more expensive. And then you also have the houses in an impoverished area prone to flooding which would be cheaper perhaps due to them being priced out of the nicer areas which might be on higher ground. Those are probably 2 very different areas and pricing.

I am kind of a safety first person, so if you are on a barrier island with 150+ winds then I don't think rebuilding really makes that much sense. There might be areas where it makes sense to rebuild farther inland with newer building precautions. The only way only way to stop rebuilding is for the government to say no you can't rebuild here and establish a way to help those people that were displaced with the value of the land/ house that they lost. We vacationed on a barrier island in NC, and I can only imagine if they got a direct hit. Even if there were on stilts which many of them were, there is no way they withstand the wind force being that it was very open and everything was made of wood.

[DarcyLongfellow]

I actually live on a barrier island. Most people in my area don't think of it as one (we just refer to the whole area as "the beaches") because it's large (between 1.5 miles to 3 miles across), but we are in between the intracoastal waterway and the Atlantic ocean. We've historically been very lucky as far as direct hits from hurricanes, and the area is generally not prone to flooding.

But there is one very high end neighborhood near me that had horrible flooding in the 2 hurricanes we had a few years ago. I knew several people who hadn't finished rebuilding from Matthew when their house flooded again in Irma. I'm sure that selling a house that flooded isn't easy, but I am still so surprised that these people in houses worth over a million dollars have chosen to just stay there. There is no doubt all of them could have sold easily, especially with the way our real estate market has been the past couple of years. During Ian last week one woman I know posted pictures on FB of how close the water came to her house -- within feet, and she was fairly nonchalant about it.

[SusanBAnthony]

Oct 3, 2022 14:59:01 GMT -5 rubytue said:

cattledogkisses, so true. They can design for wind. Water infiltration is much harder. My ILs report that there is a high water mark line (or what appears to be one) about 2 inches up their sliding glass door. Somehow, no problems in their house. But across the street, the houses look fine except the 4 inches of much that got in. Was it luck alone? Weee the door designed to support a bit of water pressure but not as much as they got across the street? Who knows.

Doors are absolutely designed for this. And they are $$$$$. So same as flood insurance people are making decisions to spend $$$ now when maybe you'll never get hit.

[circa1978]

I have complicated feelings about this. I used to live in Naples and in Bonita Springs. I've lived on several barrier islands and have lived through a few hurricanes. And I used to cover them professionally as a reporter (Charley, Frances, Wilma, and Katrina.) I spent more than a week embedded with first responders where Katrina made landfall in Mississippi/Louisiana and have also walked every place you see on the news in Sanibel/Fort Myers Beach, so although I'm experiencing this from a distance, it's been a surreal week.

Without being on the ground there, I would say it is likely that storm surge aside, structures that were rebuilt after Charley (and the several hurricanes that followed) are going to stand up about as well as anything can to a storm like this. That's expensive. Hurricane and flood insurance is expensive. Every time the Florida coasts rebuild, they become more exclusive places. People will always live there because there will always be people for whom the money really is no gamble. It was already next to impossible for a middle-class family to live in the area and the poorly constructed Jimmy Buffet era apartment I last rented on a canal in 2006 was long ago flipped into a VBRO. I'm sure it's a total loss after the storm.

Does rebuilding make sense? I'm not exaggerating when I say that I personally stood in the middle of a Katrina hurricane debris field that seemed to have no end, where boats were in trees and buildings set down and put back at a weird angle a block away and remains were recovered in front of me - so you'd think I'd know better.

BUT, I can't even tell you about how laying on the dock in front of my old house in the middle of the night and listening to the water, putting my kayak in feet from my front door and just exploring, never seeing another person, and how one of my first dates with my husband was under the stars along that waterway looking at the bioluminescence in the canal speaks to my soul. I'd go back in a heartbeat. What sucks is that's the Florida that disappears with each storm. The shitty old buildings that you love when you live there. What I learned is that when you live in Florida, you have to be willing/able to lose everything and that you evacuate, even when you think it's an overreaction. That's not a financial reality for most people and so you have the situation you have now.

[ellipses84]

The Gov’t is doing lots of infrastructure repair work in FL and PR from past hurricanes. I’ve wondered the same thing. The military needs locations there but it seems like they should be strategically moving operations that don’t have to be there to more climate stable bases.

You can only make the buildings so flood proof. Roads and garages will still flood, and people will still be evacuated or trapped for days. There will be issues with utilities and clean water. The aftermath is still horrible for the environment and insurance is an problem for repeat areas.

[pixy0stix]

WaPo has a timely article - www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/01/development-growth-florida-south-ian/

Realtors aren’t required to disclose the flood history of the properties they sell and finding that information can be difficult. In addition, many of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood maps are decades out of date and don’t account for sea level rise or flooding from sudden rain storms. Earlier this year, the agency announced it was considering reforms to these policies, as well as its flood insurance program, but it has yet to release a proposal.

“If every Realtor was required to tell people, ‘You should know over the period of your mortgage your home will flood at least once, maybe twice,’ I think people would go, 'Whoa, what?” said Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. “But due to policy failures in state capitals and in Washington we have made it extremely difficult for people to not only find that information but to even tell people about it.”

The article does end on a good note with what some communities are doing, but will it be enough?

[DotAndBuzz]

Haven't ready any articles, but on Topsail Island, NC, if you're a 1st row home, and get washed away in the storm, that's it. You aren't allowed to rebuild. You still have your property, and private parking, but the most you can put up is a covered deck of limited dimension. So when the last big storm hit them, lots of houses washed away, and as you drive down the road next to the dunes, you see like 200 yards of just decks and private parking signs. Then like 7 houses, then more decks.

It sucks for the people who own that property, (and lots of people buy it as rental revenue, then fix it up and retire there), but the ocean is currently SO close to the first row houses. Like, literally feet at high tide some days. The dunes have shifted, and shoreline has shifted so much that it looks like people literally built ON the dunes (they didn't, but barrier island coasts shift). We rented a house there this summer, and it was shocking how close we were to the water. And these are full on Atlantic waves, not in a quiet bay or something.

I don't know what the answer is, but it feels impossible.

[whatnext]

The question is what will be risk free - floods, storms, landslides, fires, tornadoes,if you considered all these especially thinking 5, 10, 20 years ahead, where do you put people

[gardengal]

Oct 3, 2022 22:05:58 GMT -5 DotAndBuzz said:

Haven't ready any articles, but on Topsail Island, NC, if you're a 1st row home, and get washed away in the storm, that's it. You aren't allowed to rebuild. You still have your property, and private parking, but the most you can put up is a covered deck of limited dimension. So when the last big storm hit them, lots of houses washed away, and as you drive down the road next to the dunes, you see like 200 yards of just decks and private parking signs. Then like 7 houses, then more decks.

It sucks for the people who own that property, (and lots of people buy it as rental revenue, then fix it up and retire there), but the ocean is currently SO close to the first row houses. Like, literally feet at high tide some days. The dunes have shifted, and shoreline has shifted so much that it looks like people literally built ON the dunes (they didn't, but barrier island coasts shift). We rented a house there this summer, and it was shocking how close we were to the water. And these are full on Atlantic waves, not in a quiet bay or something.

I don't know what the answer is, but it feels impossible.

No coastal related but there are ways the gov can nudge development to more suitable areas AND have ppl get some compensation. I took an urban planning class & there was a case study of MoCo, MD (which is a burb of DC for non locals). I’m positive I’ll get the details wrong but it went something like this:

In the recent-ish past (70s? Not, like 1890), there were farms in the county slowly being looked at for housing. But this is prime farmland! And they really wanted to encourage a city, Bethesda, to be more dense. So, they capped the building height in Bethesda UNLESS they had X credits the developer purchased from a farmland owner. The county freely gave farmers the credits & once their credits were used, their farmland was considered developed.

So, my admittedly vague recollection of this is that the gov paid very little for this scheme, the farmers who would potentially miss out on a lot of value of their land if they didn’t sell were compensated (probably not fully but more than rights to a deck & parking), and Bethesda became more of a transport hub city (metro line). And MoCoers aren’t ever tooooo far from apple picking.

So maybe people living adjacent to water/flood areas get credits which they can only sell to developers of more climate safe areas. Then that land is marked developed & can’t be rebuilt. Though, I know, emotionally giving up your home is a tough sell. But given how many places really shouldn’t have homes on them, I’m not sure the gov can afford to just buy up those properties ya know?

I’m just throwing out this info. Someone probably knows more than me & can correct any errors but I’m not wanting to debate anyone so pls don’t @-me.

I’m positive it was more complicated than I described but I feel like there ARE clever solutions & maybe rebuilding time is the best time to enact them.

[Velar Fricative]

Oct 3, 2022 15:01:55 GMT -5 waverly said:

I always thought that houses on the beach and canals were more expensive not less expensive because that was coveted property. A house on a beautiful beach is probably going to be more expensive. And then you also have the houses in an impoverished area prone to flooding which would be cheaper perhaps due to them being priced out of the nicer areas which might be on higher ground. Those are probably 2 very different areas and pricing.

I'm sure this is highly dependent on location. In NYC, if your neighborhood has the word "Beach" in its name then it probably got severely flooded by Sandy. I'm rattling off neighborhoods in my head with "Beach" in its name and yeah, I can't think of one that didn't get flooded. In my island borough, homes are definitely cheaper in those neighborhoods because when it practically floods just from drizzle. There were a lot of buyouts after Sandy but that took years and others just raised their homes up on stilts, so it's a hodgepodge of homes that doesn't allow for a wide swath of land to be reverted back to marshland.

[ssmjlm]

Oct 3, 2022 22:05:58 GMT -5 DotAndBuzz said:

Haven't ready any articles, but on Topsail Island, NC, if you're a 1st row home, and get washed away in the storm, that's it. You aren't allowed to rebuild. You still have your property, and private parking, but the most you can put up is a covered deck of limited dimension. So when the last big storm hit them, lots of houses washed away, and as you drive down the road next to the dunes, you see like 200 yards of just decks and private parking signs. Then like 7 houses, then more decks.

Many areas of the Outerbanks are the same way. Although not even decks are allowed, I think.

They are in the middle of ANOTHER beach replenishment, five year after the first one, because the sand washed away. Millions of dollars spent to basically try and preserve the coastline and dunes and houses.

[pixy0stix]

Oct 4, 2022 8:19:10 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Oct 3, 2022 22:05:58 GMT -5 DotAndBuzz said:

Haven't ready any articles, but on Topsail Island, NC, if you're a 1st row home, and get washed away in the storm, that's it. You aren't allowed to rebuild. You still have your property, and private parking, but the most you can put up is a covered deck of limited dimension. So when the last big storm hit them, lots of houses washed away, and as you drive down the road next to the dunes, you see like 200 yards of just decks and private parking signs. Then like 7 houses, then more decks.

Many areas of the Outerbanks are the same way. Although not even decks are allowed, I think.

They are in the middle of ANOTHER beach replenishment, five year after the first one, because the sand washed away. Millions of dollars spent to basically try and preserve the coastline and dunes and houses.

Which is just so fucking bad for the environment, and round and round it goes.

[waverly]

Oct 3, 2022 23:43:53 GMT -5 whatnext said:

The question is what will be risk free - floods, storms, landslides, fires, tornadoes,if you considered all these especially thinking 5, 10, 20 years ahead, where do you put people

There is no such thing as risk free.  But in this thread we are talking about hurricanes specifically and coastal lands.

In terms of floods, I think they do really need to redo their flood maps.  We have a rental property on a lake, but it is on higher ground and across the street from the lake.  It is not on any flood maps whatsoever, not even a 100 year map. 

But there are some properties that we looked at online that are in a flood plain, and we totally steered clear of purchasing those or even viewing them in person.  It is a non starter for us.  But since they are on the market, someone else could have bought them and maybe it should be marked as not habitable in some cases.  

Tornadoes are pretty unpredictable, so I don't think we can plan a house would be based on a tornado, but if it were in tornado alley you may want a storm shelter/ basement.  

I have no idea on fire prevention, but it is one of the reasons I am not moving west.  

[circa1978]

Although this thread is about hurricanes, I do think the should people rebuild question isn't limited to coastal areas. For example, the STL region experienced a catastrophic flood in 1993. People can no longer live in that area but government tax incentives turned it into the literal longest strip mall in America (building over Native American archeology in the process). I always feel like some old lady shaking my cane when I'm like, it's all going to end in tears but I mean, that's going to flood again. And by building up the flood protections there, it has pushed flooding further down the rivers into areas that aren't as hardened.

St. Louis also experienced insane flash flooding this year in areas that have never flooded before: yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/07/record-rain-in-st-louis-is-what-climate-change-looks-like. And like what's happening in Florida this week, these events are most devastating for poor and income insecure people.

[pixy0stix]

Oct 3, 2022 23:43:53 GMT -5 whatnext said:

The question is what will be risk free - floods, storms, landslides, fires, tornadoes,if you considered all these especially thinking 5, 10, 20 years ahead, where do you put people

Flooding is much easier to predict, though. Especially sea level rise, because that's going to happen no matter what we do now.