The 1 percent’s flood insurance scam
The law represented an alliance between fiscal conservatives interested in bringing the NFIP back into balance, and some environmental groups, who believed that subsidizing homeowners with low flood insurance rates failed the test of making the costs of climate change real, and would delay the spur to action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Repetitive loss” homeowners, many paying significantly discounted rates dating back to the 1970s, represent one-third of all NFIP claims, according to the R Street Institute, and continual subsidies for them result in “nothing but environmental catastrophe and financial ruin,” according to R Street fellow R.J. Lehmann.
