A good summary of the bill that @repblumenauer and I introduced today to overhaul our National Flood Insurance Program, to help homeowners rebuild more quickly and keep the program solvent in the wake of ever-increasing floods. thehill.com/policy/equilib…
A major driver behind this bill was a comment made to me at the beginning of my 1st term: "Insurance is for things that are expensive, rare and unpredictable. Thanks to global warming, flooding is only expensive."
From flooded properties along the Fox River, Mayors and Managers struggling to manage costs in low-lying parts of #IL06 and all the funding requests our office has received / helped fund for storm sewer upgrades, it's become ever clearer that flooding is NOT just a coastal issue.
Moreover, the structure we currently use to approve claims for flooded properties often means that homeowners may have to wait YEARS to make urgent repairs, and then still have to pay 10% of the cost out of pocket.
So as it sits right now, we have an NFIP that is ever more insolvent, and home-owners facing horrible choices to pay out of pocket in the hope of a future claim or else risk the loss of all their equity. This bill fixes all of those problems by:
1) Eliminating the requirement for a 10% copay, and
2) For repetitive loss properties, calculating the future costs of claims and offering a "buyout-in-lieu-of-claims" if cheaper
2) For repetitive loss properties, calculating the future costs of claims and offering a "buyout-in-lieu-of-claims" if cheaper
That latter piece means that if it's cheaper to relocate you to higher ground, we will use the NFIP to do so, and then permanently take that parcel of land out of development, letting it become a natural flood barrier (aka, "sponge") to reduce the risk to surrounding properties.
The current NFIP funding expires in September 2022, so we've got a short window to get this done, but I'm optimistic we have a path. Stay tuned. /fin
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