Something I don't understand (related to Ida about to hit Louisiana)

[gimmethesimplelife]

.....is the following. Why do you believe people who live in areas at high risk of natural disasters - such as New Orleans - once they get insurance money, why do they rebuild in the same area, still at risk of natural disasters? This is something I will never understand. Were it me I'd take the money and start over somewhere not as disaster prone - say Virginia or Montana or Arizona or Nevada or New Mexico or somewhere else, anywhere not as disaster prone.

Is it that part of their identity is wrapped up in where they live? That's the only explanation I can find that I can begin to understand due to my involvement in my neighborhood - and no worries, I'm not bringing up my zip code again. Do you think this is it, identity wrapped up in where they live? Rob

[bae]

Family, friends, jobs, social networks, social capital, ...

[gimmethesimplelife]

Family, friends, jobs, social networks, social capital, ...Bae, I can see this, yes, but......that which you have listed will not ward off another natural disaster if choosing to stay put and rebuild. Rob

[Yppej]

Some insurance policies require you to rebuild the existing property.

[GeorgeParker]

Perhaps a better question is why insurance companies and government relief agencies keep paying the high cost of cleaning up and rebuilding after these disasters instead of buying everybody out (using eminent domain if they have to) and rebuilding the town in a safer place? Years ago the federal government bought entire towns that had been flooded by the Mississippi River by giving the residents property on higher ground and helping to fund rebuilding the town in that new location. But now when it becomes obvious that an area is so storm/flood prone that it will have to be demolished and rebuilt every 10-20 years, the powers that be just keep right on paying the cost of rebuilding it over and over.

[bae]

I'm pretty sure the frequency and intensity of these events will decrease, once climate change really gets rolling...

[GeorgeParker]

I'm pretty sure the frequency and intensity of these events will decrease, once climate change really gets rolling...They're certainly going to decrease on islands and along coastlines since anything less than ten feet above sea level now will be ten feet below sea level and most of Florida will be a tidal marsh.

[iris lilies]

They're certainly going to decrease on islands and along coastlines since anything less than ten feet above sea level now will be ten feet below sea level and most of Florida will be a tidal marsh.
Well, that’s looking at the bright side!

[LDAHL]

I’ve heard that the average American moves a dozen or so times. Maybe they figure they’ll be out before the next big disaster.

Or maybe it’s a devil you know thing. You might know what to expect from your soggy flood plain, and might not want to try tornado alley, or some desert city dependent on shrinking rivers, or the scorched and smoking west. Or you might think anything’s better than the frozen north or crowded east.

[organictex]

.....is the following. Why do you believe people who live in areas at high risk of natural disasters - such as New Orleans - once they get insurance money, why do they rebuild in the same area, still at risk of natural disasters? This is something I will never understand. Were it me I'd take the money and start over somewhere not as disaster prone - say Virginia or Montana or Arizona or Nevada or New Mexico or somewhere else, anywhere not as disaster prone.

Is it that part of their identity is wrapped up in where they live? That's the only explanation I can find that I can begin to understand due to my involvement in my neighborhood - and no worries, I'm not bringing up my zip code again. Do you think this is it, identity wrapped up in where they live? Rob

same reason folks burned out in wildfires rebuild as well? i remember John Stossel doing a story 30 years ago or so about people with beach condo's doing this
very thing since some government program was paying for it, and he he himself admitted using that very program!

[ToomuchStuff]

Perhaps a better question is why insurance companies and government relief agencies keep paying the high cost of cleaning up and rebuilding after these disasters instead of buying everybody out (using eminent domain if they have to) and rebuilding the town in a safer place? Years ago the federal government bought entire towns that had been flooded by the Mississippi River by giving the residents property on higher ground and helping to fund rebuilding the town in that new location. But now when it becomes obvious that an area is so storm/flood prone that it will have to be demolished and rebuilt every 10-20 years, the powers that be just keep right on paying the cost of rebuilding it over and over.


While they rebuild, there are often times where their are new building restrictions. In New Orleans, the houses were built on stilts. In Florida, a monolithic dome was built on pilings and has survived multiple hurricanes.

When I was a kid, where I was left when I was abducted, was a manhole cover that comes up in the middle of a creek, not far from my home. Those creeks had flooded around that time and multiple houses that had flooded, were knocked down and not built again.

[GeorgeParker]

Every general statement has exceptions, including what I said about rebuilding. Therefore the truth or falsity of a proposition lies not in there being no exceptions, but rather in the general statement being true most of the time.

[flowerseverywhere]

Louisiana is only beat by Mississippi for the highest poverty rate in the country. At least it has expanded Medicaid. Mississippi, and Alabama (45th in poverty) do not. So these areas have a high income disparity, and not having expanded Medicaid affects the hospitals as well who do not get reimbursed for treating residents.

https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/status-of-state-medicaid-expansion-decisions-interactive-map/

These states also have low rated schools.

I gave some background because it is a culture in many southern states that is very difficult for impoverished people to overcome. If you are poor, you don’t have the money to be able to move, or evacuate. I can get into my car that runs well and have money for food, gas, hotels etc to leave my house and go somewhere safe immediately. My kids and siblings have many people to depend on if they need help. The poor do not have that.

when we travel DH likes to go the back way instead of highways. As we have travelled through these states there are many areas mired in poverty. Don’t think about grocery shopping there because the quality of fresh food is so low. Stores don’t stock what local people cannot buy. Abandoned downtown, closed motels and a dollar general store is a common scene. Sometimes in the outskirts is a Walmart.

we went to the WW2 museum in New Orleans a while back. It is world class. Many areas of the city have dilapidated houses with some windows boarded up for example. Then there are the higher ground areas beautiful areas of the city. As you drive in to N.O. there are these giant metal gates they close to try to keep the worst floodwater out as it is like a below sea level bowl.
The income disparity here is very evident. So many people cannot evacuate or move as they just don’t have the means. I can’t imagine any government program that will change this.

[flowerseverywhere]

While they rebuild, there are often times where their are new building restrictions. In New Orleans, the houses were built on stilts. In Florida, a monolithic dome was built on pilings and has survived multiple hurricanes.

When I was a kid, where I was left when I was abducted, was a manhole cover that comes up in the middle of a creek, not far from my home. Those creeks had flooded around that time and multiple houses that had flooded, were knocked down and not built again.

we saw that house in the panhandle. There was little that survived around it. Hurricane Michael did a tremendous amount of destruction miles inland, as did Katrina. Nice places to visit, but living there is extremely risky.

[jp1]

Perhaps because they’ve always lived there. The typical American lives 18 miles from their mom.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html

[Yppej]

The income disparity here is very evident. So many people cannot evacuate or move as they just don’t have the means. I can’t imagine any government program that will change this.

Guaranteed basic income.

For inconsistent medical reimbursement rates - single payer.

[GeorgeParker]

Perhaps because they’ve always lived there. The typical American lives 18 miles from their mom.True but irrelevant.

If you are on good terms with your family and content with the place you grew up (or where your parents currently live) why would you move to someplace more than 15-20 miles away? There's no incentive to leave the places and people you love behind unless you need to do it for a more exciting life, to pursue a dream that requires living in a different place (mountain climber, cowboy, movie star, surfer) for economic reasons (better jobs elsewhere or few jobs where you live) or maybe because you fell in love with someone you met at college and they want to live near their family. IOW proximity to family is the norm, but it's not an incentive for moving back to a dangerous area after a disaster.

In addition, because the typical American lives close to family members, any big natural disaster would probably effect all of them and give the whole family an incentive to move. If not, it seems likely the family members least effected by the disaster would urge their unfortunate relatives to move from the dangerous area to a safer area closer to them. And yet, when efforts were made to demolish the lower ninth ward and move residents elsewhere after Katrina, many of the residents raised hell and insisted on their flooded homes being rebuilt. http://archive.oah.org/special-issues/katrina/Landphair.html even though that's a low-income area and most of the relatives of people who got flooded out were probably flooded out too.

[jp1]

I guess if the whole family has money they could make the decision to move after a big natural disaster. But I suspect that 1) most families don’t have the kind of money to make such a move, 2) talking everyone in the family into making a big change would be damn near impossible, and 3) most people who live near their birthplace also include a lot of non-family members as reasons to stay put. Was the plan to move the entire ninth ward together to some new ‘ninth ward’? Or was it to scatter them all to the winds across a variety of communities? The devil you know, and the community you have, is better than the unknown.

[GeorgeParker]

I guess if the whole family has money they could make the decision to move after a big natural disaster.If you don't have enough money to move, you sure as heck don't have enough money to rebuild a severely damaged house. So if the government says "we'll give you money to move, but we won't give you a single penny to rebuild," only a fool would insist on rebuilding.

Besides: EMINENT DOMAIN!!! The government steals people's property all the time to build stadiums, and they steal all the property close by so developers can build stores and hotels near the stadium without having to pay "valuable commercial property" prices for the property.

Hell, when malls were still expanding, our local government forced an entire residential neighborhood to sell their property to an adjacent mall that wanted to expand and made the homeowners accept what their houses would have been worth as residential property instead of being able to negotiate a fair "commercial property" price for their homes.

If the government can get away with sheet like that on a regular basis, they can sure as hell tell a flooded neighborhood that they won't be allowed to rebuild. In fact one of the main reasons ninth ward resident's didn't want to sell and move is because they suspected the government would turn their property over to wealthy developers after the poor, mostly black residents were forced out.

[jp1]

If you don’t have enough money to move you probably didn’t have enough money to own the house in the first place.

[GeorgeParker]

If you don’t have enough money to move you probably didn’t have enough money to own the house in the first place.I bought my house 20 years ago for $56,000. Because of real estate price inflation, it's current market value is $170,000. If I wanted to move I would have to buy a house that cost less than $170,000 and pay mostly cash, because I sure as hell couldn't cover the monthly payments on a $170,000 mortgage with my $20,000/year income.

[jp1]

Watching the National news just now they interviewed two women that had been rescued from their home. One of them said ‘we thought we’d be ok since we live in a two story house so we could go upstairs when the water came in.’ That seems pretty hardcore to me. Basing one’s hurricane survival plan on just going upstairs as the lower floor of your house fills up with water. On the other hand, they DID survive, so maybe they made the right call. Personally I’m incredibly thankful that I have the luxury of an emergency fund so that I can just leave before an event like that.

[Teacher Terry]

I would evacuate but Louisiana is very poor.

[Jane v2.0]

I bought my house 20 years ago for $56,000. Because of real estate price inflation, it's current market value is $170,000. If I wanted to move I would have to buy a house that cost less than $170,000 and pay mostly cash, because I sure as hell couldn't cover the monthly payments on a $170,000 mortgage with my $20,000/year income.

I bought my house in 1987, and it's creeping up on ten times the price I paid for it--at least on paper. I couldn't begin to afford local house prices today. Coincidentally, my old Beaverton condo that I paid 35K for in 1977 is also going for ten times its original price.