A call for fair rates of flood insurance
Critics grumbled that the program amounted to a hand-out to the well-heeled, who prefer living near the water while forcing folks in the hinterlands to diversify the risk of dwelling in a picturesque flood zone. At least that was a prevailing argument back in 2012. The libertarian think tank R Street Institute described the National Flood Insurance Program as welfare-for-the-rich, noting that “78.8 percent of subsidized policies are in counties that rank in the top 30 percent of home values, while less than 1 percent are in counties that rank in the bottom 30 percent.”…
…It seems this particular variety of fiscal conservatism isn’t nearly as much fun as cutting welfare or food stamps or unemployment payments. Plenty of working class Floridians face huge spikes in their premiums but what’s important here, as the libertarians at the R Street Institute noted, is that the program disproportionately subsidizes the coastal homes of the wealthy. When rich folks squeal, pols in Washington tend to listen.
