As part of our Climate & Land Use Technical Assistance Program, we worked with Florida-based community organization, Incubate Neighborhood Center (INC), to raise awareness about the ways that climate change is impacting their community’s infrastructure, insurance rates, and economic opportunity. In this video, business owners, government officials, and regional resilience partners talk about how flooding … Continued
As climate change brings more frequent flooding and storms to large swaths of the U.S., under-resourced communities tend to bear the brunt of their effects. This inequity is, in large part, due to a long history of discriminatory land use policies and practices that segregated and disinvested in Black and Brown communities, leaving them oftentimes … Continued
As part of our Climate & Land Use Technical Assistance Program, Smart Growth America partnered with a local Florida-based organization, Incubate Neighborhood Center (INC), to raise awareness about the impacts that intensifying storms and flooding have on housing affordability, infrastructure, and economic development in their community. Focused on the Fort Pierce area in St. Lucie … Continued
Damaged homes along the New Jersey shore after Sandy. Photo by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Flickr.
When communities are hit by a hurricane or flooding, the National Flood Insurance Program helps families recover and rebuild. Changes to the program proposed by Smart Growth America—and supported by the Obama Administration—could help homeowners reduce their flood risk and cut costs for the federal government at the same time.
Most homeowners’ insurance policies do not cover damage from flooding, and the National Flood Insurnce Program (NFIP) is a supplemental insurance offered by FEMA to protect families financially from flood damage. Many NFIP plan members pay highly subsidized rates that do not reflect the true risk of flooding or the costs associated with it, and these subsidies have contributed to increased development in flood hazard areas, putting more people and property at risk. All this has come at a high cost to taxpayers: The program is currently almost $24 billion in debt to the Department of Treasury.
Federally subsidized flood insurance makes it easier to build homes in flood-prone areas. Image via Wikimedia.
This is the first in a series of posts discussing recommendations from our new platform Federal Investment in Real Estate: A Call for Action. The series will highlight what is lacking in current federal real estate policy and how our recommended improvements could generate better returns for families, communities and taxpayers.
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is intended to provide property owners and renters with a way to financially protect themselves from flood damage. Administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the NFIP works closely with nearly 90 private insurance companies to offer flood insurance to homeowners, renters and business owners.
