Maggie's Farm

My whole coastal county is a 500-year flood zone, and much of it is 100-year. Nevertheless, very little of the area is exposed to the risk of moving water, especially wave action. That means it's not very hard to build appropriately against the risk. For most homeowners, all that's needed is a moderately raised foundation. In other other areas houses are up on stilts, and flood codes require the bottom floor to be a sacrificial break-away structure.

We have windstorm risk here, too, but again, the advances in construction technology since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 meant that most houses built in the last 20 years or so did very well in a Category 4 direct hit here in 2017. When we built in 2005, we were not subject to any code requirements, because we lived in an unincorporated area and had no mortgage. We built well because we were managing our own risk with our own money.

Insurance can work if insurers are allowed to condition their business on being convinced that structures are built well. The problem arises when you object to the idea that some people are insurable and others are not. If you mandate universal coverage, the wheels are going to come off one way or another. Either people will build unsafely and have to be bailed out by more prudent neighbors, or people will be forbidden to build at all, even if they're willing and able to absorb their own losses.