I'm with you almost 100%... But the idea that it's all millionaires that lost their homes is wrong. Every community on the eater on LI got hammered. I'm not talking about beach front homes. Small towns on the bay not the ocean.
Yes that's true, but the majority of damage EVERY SINGLE year(sandy was a fluke) is to ocean front homes. That was the point I was trying to make. Every noreaster does damage in some area's to these homes. Some area's in new england have been abandoned. You can't fight mother nature. The ocean is constantly changing. Like I said, it's kind of mute point anyway whether their rich people or not when it comes to fact that we are overdeveloping our coast. Everyone who builds near a river that floods every 15 years isn't rich. Same principle applies.
I'm perfectly aware all wealth is not inherited. My god. Some people get lucky. Some people are really smart. Getting screwed? How is the government buying your house once it's been destroyed for fair market value getting screwed? The government has been subsidizing these land oceanfront owners for years. You just want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to ***** about surfers hoping for hurricanes not making landfall, yet live in a coastal area. Sort of like living in the high rockies and complaining about the snow.
Why would you be celebrating a hurricane/noreaster by riding waves in it? Isn't that insulting to the property owners? By your logic it is.
Here's a question for you coastal folks. How come so many of you were uninsured? Maybe you don't have mortgages? The only way anyone in my neck of the woods can get away without having wind & hail, flood, and general homeowners insurance is if you own your house. I think it's pretty naive, even with the freak storm like Sandy, to not protect your investments with some insurance.
i didn't ***** about anything, smart guy. i've not said one word complaining about surfers hoping for non-landfalling hurricanes. i AM a surfer, for ****'s sake! as for how am i getting screwed? it's being screwed when the gov't tells me where i can & can't live, the gov't forcing my family out of a place it has inhabited for generations, since well before the coast was the fashionable place to go on vacation. i don't want it both ways, i want to be left alone. if my home is destroyed, let me rebuild it, don't pay me the "fair market value" of the empty lot & tell me to get on w/ my life. this IS my life. THAT'S how it's being screwed. stop thinking you know what's best for someone & let them live their lives.
insurance doesnt help too much. I have flood insurance and it only covered the mechanicals in the basement and washer/dryer. thousands and thousands of dollars paid to the same insurance company over 25years and getting anything from them was nearly impossible. I think the only way flood insurance would save the day is if one's home was completely destroyed and washed away.
I live on the bay and have no mortgage. i self insure by having money put away in case. To repair my house from a flood its repair the floors, a four foot rip of the 1st floor walls, and landscaping. All of which i can do myself. I just need money for the material. We keep appliances and utilities high and everything else we move to the 2nd floor when the storm is on the way. Floods happen even without a storm here. You live here long enough you get used to it and deal. Hey I also don't have the best of everything. This is not the place for Wainscoting, a Subzero fridge, and a Viking Stove.
So? Can you fault people for wanting to go to the beach? Whether it's to visit or to live, you're never going to stop development from supporting the crowds. You just have to accept the risks and hope for the best.
This is where you are wrong. On the surface it may appear that these houses take the brunt of the damage because they are closest to the ocean. Really though the majority of damage occurs on the back bays where the elevations are lower and there are no dunes for protection. It does not matter if its a hurricane, tropical storm or noreaster, these are the first areas to flood. And these are typically the more modest houses and bungalows that are not owned by millionaires but middle class folks.
Reading facts on the internet, lol. Just roll through some of the coastal towns in NJ. There are plenty that are of towns comprised of blue working class people. Of course houses in areas like Spring Lake and Sea Girt which are 15 million bring up the value of the cheaper houses.
The bays flood a lot more than the ocean front around here. Take a combo of a super high tide, a strong wind in the right direction that won't let the tide recede, and heavy rain that can't drain out because of the high tide and the bay will flood. The ocean front gets structual damage from the wave surge. The bays just slowly, or sometimes not so slowly, fill up with water and crawl up the street and it doesn't take a direct hit from a storm to do it. It can happen sometimes even when a hurricane just passes by and gives us something to surf. The oceanfront town damage happens like Godzilla coming to town. the bay town damage is more like the Blob.
I'm glad someone said it! On a more serious note, I'm all for people living as close as they want to the beachfront BUT not when the cost gets bucked to taxpayers like myself. One thing that I don't think has been mentioned yet is the issue of FEMA subsidizing insurance for flood prone areas. I think it was talked about in the Sandy thread though. I had to check my facts on Wikipedia but basically what happened in the 50s is that insurance companies stopped insuring homes on the coast and flood plains because they were losing money. Eventually, however, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created by the government to provide flood insurance for those in flood prone areas. The NFIP was supposed to be self-sufficient but they don’t charge the full rate they should because a lot of homeowners can’t afford it. They keep running up huge deficits and borrowing from the Treasury to keep solvent. So taxpayers pay for people, rich and poor, to be able to live on the coast. That’s the real issue. It doesn’t matter what size house you have. If you live on the coast you should be paying insurance based on the real costs and risks of living there. That is all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Flood_Insurance_Program
