“There was, back in the 90s, an amendment to the National Flood Insurance Program called the Upton Jones Amendment,” said Couch, “and it essentially paid 40% of the property policy to relocate the home, and paid 110% of the policy to demolish the home.”<p>“Well, in its short five-year existence, with the combination of hurricanes, the lunar tides, and some bad stuff weather-wise, it proved to be very [costly], and 75% of the applicants were for demolishing their homes,” added Couch. “So, as you can imagine, the insurance lobby put the kibosh on that pretty quickly.”<p>A bummer that targeted special-interest lobbying always seems to have the tactical advantage that diffuse citizen interests lack.
I'll preface this with that I am a believer in climate change, etc, etc, not trying to deny anything, but listing the #1 reason that the shoreline moved as "climate change" appears to be incorrect. The Outer Banks are a barrier island, and barrier islands naturally migrate over time; they have a general tendency to move rapidly and unpredictably. Another sign of this is that the Outer Banks, in the Rodanthe area, actually (net) migrated further from 1852 to 1946 than it did from 1852 to 2020.
People were upset that federally backed mortgages were being used to build / purchase homes in flood prone areas.<p>So they passed a law to stop doing that unless the borrower got adequate flood insurance.<p>However, no insurance company in their right mind would offer insurance for such properties.<p>People said this was not fair, so the federal government created subsidized flood insurance.<p>Reagan was right. "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps on moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."
I suspect that most of the barrier islands along the United States' eastern intracoastal waterway will submerged by the time I die (2070ish). The pace at which beach disappears near my local barrier island has clearly increased in the past decade.
They can't force owners to remove the houses directly, but they could potentially make owners liable for expected clean up. That could indirectly get owners to take the situation more seriously.
Pro tip, don't friggin' build houses on sand!<p>"Everyone who hears these words of mine, and doesn't do them will be like a foolish man, who built his house on the sand. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house; and it fell—and great was its fall."