People's houses are collapsing into the ocean. FEMA gives them no other option

9 pointsposted 13 hours ago
by toomuchtodo
(npr.org)

3 Comments

UltraSane

11 hours ago

It is hard to feel sorry for anyone who built their house on a sandy beach right next to the ocean. The consequences are rather predictable.

bell-cot

6 hours ago

The article describes several houses either built or bought at seemingly considerable distances from the ocean - yet now near or at the point of ruin.

A competent gov't would keep maps of projected future shorelines, and enforce very wide "no build", "no mortgage", and "no insurance" zones. OTOH, that would require both a great deal of effort, and a great deal of political resolve. Vs. Congress can't manage to deal with even the immediate mess that the article describes.

bell-cot

13 hours ago

The second half of NPR's headline is bullshit - as the story makes clear. FEMA is stuck working in Congress's Customer Service Dept. Congress is very aware that their CS policies suck. But Congress is too dysfunctional to fix the problems.

(And people do have saner options - but Congress's laws attach huge financial penalties to those.)