Hurricane Ian traumatized Floridians. It also erased their nest egg.

Robert59

Robert59

Well-known Member
Location
Now I live in Tennesee. Did live in Michigan.
Hurricane Ian has displaced thousands of Floridians' whose homes are now uninhabitable. The storm took their safety nets with it, too.

As Florida tallies the immediate tab from its deadliest hurricane in decades, the destruction it wreaked on homes will erase retirees’ nest eggs and families' primary way of passing along wealth to new generations. That exposed the dangers of American dependence on housing as most people's financial backstop and lifeline.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/rea...A12N2VX?cvid=74410ec57dfe4eca98b5164168ce4e67
 

Oh I believe it and it's very sad. I'm yet to click on the link but it's a very good point that wealth is wrapped in housing. Then if it's gone. Now what. This has played out in my area with the fires. While I didn't burn, it sure made prices go up, rent and real estate.

Even I have anxiety over a lot of sirens because I remember all of them from the fire. Last week I heard a bunch and kept checking the local news site online worried that it could be another fire. It turns out there was a tragic accident not far from me where a woman was killed by a car.
 
While helping out my friend in Florida, I was able to speak to a lot of Floridians about their situations. Most told me they had taken out insurance, but not Hurricane or flood insurances because of the costs involved. One lady came to me because she saw me helping another guy and asked me if I would fix her awning, which was hanging by it’s hinges. It was a hurricane awning that closes down over a big front room window. I needed some screws, but she didn’t have any so I asked a fellow that was fixing another home if he would sell me some screws. He looked at the size screw I needed and handed me a box and said to take what I needed. When I was finished fixing the awning, she asked if she could pay me on Thursday when she got her check. I told her to forget it. I don’t charge for doing favors. She was very grateful and even offered me lunch. I enjoy helping people, if I am able. My grandpa taught me how to repair stuff when I worked on the farm.

There are 2 forms of aid down there. FEMA and Florida Disaster Relief. FEMA helped my friend with temporary housing and between FEMA snd Florida Disaster Relief, he will get grants to replace his home, but not all of it. He will have to pay for a little more than half of the cost. He gets a little more information about the home every few days. It’s a process, that’s for sure.

It depends on how much money a person has and that’s what will determine eligibility and how much money you may be eligible for. If a senior has $500,000 in a retirement IRA, they may not be eligible for a dime. They help with housing, but replacing a boat is highly unlikely, unless it’s a houseboat that the person lives in/on.
 

Been There said:
While helping out my friend in Florida, I was able to speak to a lot of Floridians about their situations. Most told me they had taken out insurance, but not Hurricane or flood insurances because of the costs involved. One lady came to me because she saw me helping another guy and asked me if I would fix her awning, which was hanging by it’s hinges. It was a hurricane awning that closes down over a big front room window. I needed some screws, but she didn’t have any so I asked a fellow that was fixing another home if he would sell me some screws. He looked at the size screw I needed and handed me a box and said to take what I needed. When I was finished fixing the awning, she asked if she could pay me on Thursday when she got her check. I told her to forget it. I don’t charge for doing favors. She was very grateful and even offered me lunch. I enjoy helping people, if I am able. My grandpa taught me how to repair stuff when I worked on the farm.

There are 2 forms of aid down there. FEMA and Florida Disaster Relief. FEMA helped my friend with temporary housing and between FEMA snd Florida Disaster Relief, he will get grants to replace his home, but not all of it. He will have to pay for a little more than half of the cost. He gets a little more information about the home every few days. It’s a process, that’s for sure.

It depends on how much money a person has and that’s what will determine eligibility and how much money you may be eligible for. If a senior has $500,000 in a retirement IRA, they may not be eligible for a dime. They help with housing, but replacing a boat is highly unlikely, unless it’s a houseboat that the person lives in/on.
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Good point here: Housing is a necessity. A boat is a luxury. Why would the government go around replacing people's toys?
 
Been There said:
not Hurricane or flood insurances because of the costs involved
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It is quite a conundrum whether to pay for flood insurance. It feels so freaking expensive to pay it, when I had my house (in Nebraska) I had to pay $500 a month even though the house was built 3 feet up and it was a very low risk. So I stopped paying for flood insurance as soon as I paid off the house (the bank required flood insurance for the mortgage).

What I hadn't realized was that if the flood damage is 50% or more of the value of the home, the home owner doesn't get the option to pay for repairs, the local government condemns the home and so then you have to pay to remove and rebuild.
 
So I get that flood insurance is expensive. But if you live in Florida, you can pretty much guarantee that you’re going to be hit by a hurricane at some point. So if you take that risk, and you lose, that’s on you. In 2011 we had terrible wildfires near us. Some people lost their homes but weren’t insured. My sympathies are limited.
 
There is an easy choice regarding insurance. Don't live in places where natural disasters are probable within lifetimes or accept occasional random destruction. Live on an earthquake fault? along the Mississippi River? along an eastern or gulf barrier island? within a jungle of dry chaparral? in Tornado Alley?

Well if so it could all be gone tomorrow or if lucky after your lifetime. It's a GAMBLE.
 
I was watching a 60 Minutes segment on Hurricane Ivan. They interviewed the owner of an insurance agency who indicated that only 18% of his clients had flood insurance. When asked why, he said it is because it is so expensive. He also said that it is difficult for adjusters to determine whether it was the winds or the flooding that created the damage, so insurance claims are being held up. Lastly, he indicated that his own insurance has now increased from $3000 to $10,000 per year. 6 insurance companies that were heavily invested in Florida have now gone out of business. I'm just not sure what the future is for the southern part of the state.
 
CarolfromTX said:
So I get that flood insurance is expensive. But if you live in Florida, you can pretty much guarantee that you’re going to be hit by a hurricane at some point. So if you take that risk, and you lose, that’s on you. In 2011 we had terrible wildfires near us. Some people lost their homes but weren’t insured. My sympathies are limited.
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We lived in South Florida and were hit by several hurricanes. We had insurance.

However, flood insurance has become very expensive in Florida these days and there were lots of elderly residents living in mobile home parks in Ft. Myers that could not afford it. Yes, it was their decision to live there in a hurricane-prone area but I find it hard not to have sympathy for them. Not everyone is well off enough to just pick up and move. I try not to be judgmental.

We have tornadoes in Texas. Do you want someone judging you because you had a house there when a tornado took it down?
 
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HoneyNut said:
Don't they always show Florida mostly gone under water with future ocean levels, wonder how people will know when to stop rebuilding and relocate instead.
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Yes, it seems like common sense but like everyone else that loves where they live they just seem to feel compelled to stay where they are. I have a brother-in-law in Miami, and he has no interest in moving away. I do think it will be many years before the ocean levels rise enough to put Miami underwater. It will probably happen after his lifetime.
 
ARC are the very first boots on the ground anywhere in America providing a wide spectrum of organizational assistance. In the event of any disaster if one has a scanner they can program 47.42 MHz and listen to the action in real time.

www.radioreference.com/db/aid/7837

SarNet is considered the primary ham radio platform to the Florida Statewide EOD's disaster aid communications platform. Unfortunately Ian completely destroyed it's statewide network.

www.sarnetfl.com

www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/35392
 
What the government ought to do, is declare destroyed areas along shores public lands preventing any building, that are at low elevations certain to flood given sea level rise. For areas inland enough on geologically appropriate land, allow building only hurricane proof structures elevated above first floor garages. Those former dated mobile home park lands and other structurally inadequate homes that were destroyed, would be sold to builders of hurricane proof buildings with the sales going to both the mobile park owners and those who had been living there. If they are able to purchase one of the new safe homes fine. If not they ought use those funds to move elsewhere beyond hurricane prone coastlines.
 
This is more or less the reason I sold our beach house and ultimately left Florida. Hurricane Dennis about 18 years ago did hundreds of thousands of dollars damage to my home and a small office building I owned and worked out of. We had flood insurance but it paid only a relatively small fraction of the losses. I had too much in my 401ks for FEMA or any other agency to provide any real help. I understand that.

When I sold the value of my home and other property were substantially reduced by the damage history, even though I had rebuilt and restored better. I lost a lot, but got out ok. I know others were hit harder.

Now that I look at it in retrospect I don't think the government should be in the business of bailing out people who choose to live in risky places. I got some help, the limited flood insurance payments, my biggest was a pretty substantial tax deduction I was able to take for the losses. That tax deduction is only available to people in counties declared disaster areas. It will be a shock to Florida's real estate business, but things like the federal flood insurance program need to end. And I would take a close look at things like that tax deduction, I benefited from it, but am not sure I should have.

The situation in Louisiana is even worse than Florida. In and around New Orleans hundreds of thousands of people live in houses near or below sea level. Only the levees make them dry, most of the time. Most of the cost of those levees are borne by us, through the US Army Corps of engineers. Then federal flood insurance is sold to those people at rates assuming the levees will not fail. As Katrina showed that is a fallacy. A double subsidy supporting building in risky places.

After Katrina the US government spent billions making it possible for those folks in risky places to rebuild... in the same places. New Orleans was not hit by the worst of Katrina, Mississippi was, but being lower Louisiana got more damage. The New Orleans area has been flooded by many hurricanes in the past and will continue to be, and it is getting worse for a variety of reasons, including sea level rise, coastal erosion, and possibly climate change driven more powerful storms. The area is also at risk from the Mississippi River, another River flood comparable to 1927 would do billions in damage, and it will happen.

About done venting, I feel strongly about this, we need to stop building in high risk places, first step in that direction is stopping government subsidies for doing it.

Don't get me wrong I am not opposed to emergency disaster relief for those in immediate need. But that is something different.

@David777 you put forward some good ideas. One real problem are some of the older homes, not built to current hurricane standards, and often occupied by older retired fixed income folks. Many of the trailer parks are good examples. Never should have been built but figuring out what to do for those people now isn't going to be easy. I fear we will just wait for the next one and deal poorly with it then. That's what we have been doing for years.
 

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