Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” may not be exactly right. It is an expression of his classical mind that still believed in “Laws of Nature” and struggled with probability, uncertainty and the seemingly mysterious vagaries of our underlying quantum microverse. In many ways he was the last of the Newtonians.
Even so, Newton’s Laws work well enough on our grosser level and are close enough for “horseshoes and hand grenades” to be useful. And so, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different outcomes is a useful definition of “insanity.”
That’s why FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program underwrites the insanity of rebuilding a house that gets flooded out again and again because of its location on that same location, or building a new house in on ground that gets flooded out over and over. This is especially true now with more frequent vigorous storms than in the recorded past and an inevitably rising sea level.
Engineers live by the maxim “good planning is preparation for the inevitable.” The government subsidized National Flood Insurance Program is at cross-purposes with this. The reason private insurers do not write home flood insurance policies is because it is considered a “bad bet” for the insurer.
While fire may never burn down a premises, a powerful wind do significant damage, the home be burglarized, or a third party get injured there, sooner or later there will be a flood in easy-to-anticipate areas and the insurer will lose the bet on any property located there that it insures.
Generally flood damage is very extensive and often catastrophic. Unless the homeowner has been paying sufficient premiums over a much-extended period of time, the insurer will be in the hole. That is why private insurers will not write flood policies.
And that is why America’s major builders and the National Association of Realtors lobbied hard to get legislation originally intended help federally insure the Tennessee Valley Area extended to cover the roughly 5,000 flood-prone areas in our country. Otherwise they could not readily build and sell uninsurable houses that the lending industry would not finance.
These days, any rational attempt by the federal government to cut back on its generous flood insurance taxpayer subsidies encounters the stiffest lobbying resistance by these same groups.
Thus far, FEMA has paid out around $2.4 billion in claims by its policy holders in Florida affected by Ian, while distributing more than $1.1 billion in outright grants to those without FEMA flood insurance policies. To be sure, that is far more than the total premiums it collected from its affected policy holders.
Clearly the cost to taxpayers will be unsustainable as the same flooded homes are rebuilt over and over in the same locations enabled by heavily subsidized FEMA flood insurance, meeting Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Rational government policy should see a curtailing of building permits in areas that will have to be evacuated within the next 50 years. But do you honestly believe that our county elected officials can or would stand up to the pressures the builders and selling agents of very pricey “McMansions” in these most vulnerable flood zones will exert to resist any change from business as usual?
And can you imagine our local congressman and Florida’s U.S. senators supporting the federal government dropping its FEMA flood insurance subsidies for new residential construction in our flood-prone areas, and for existing homes either charging actuarially sound rates or not insuring against flood at all?
Many private home insurance companies have stopped writing policies in this hurricane-prone region where losses will only escalate over time. Why should we taxpayers be stuck with the tab via FEMA to fund a policy that flies in the face of reality (much like every Florida property taxpayer subsidizes the state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corporation for those homeowners with commercially uninsurable properties)?
FEMA must stop insuring against flooding for future residential construction in areas practically guaranteed to flood more and more as storms intensify and increase in number in low-lying coastal regions where the sea level is predicted to rise 10-12 inches over the next 30 years.
In fairness, the existing residences should be grandfathered in with premiums gradually increasing to real actuarially sound levels. However, the next time these properties experience catastrophic flood damage, FEMA should offer a fair-market buy-out of the structure and cease insuring it or any other residence built at that location.
In the end, it’s a lot more than about money. It’s about good planning for an inevitable future versus subsidizing disasters that can be anticipated and mitigated now.
Bruce Diamond is a resident of Fort Myers.
