Reps. Peters, Barr Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Incentivize Smarter Development After Natural Disaster Floods
Today, Rep.
The Build for Future Disasters Act would end NFIP subsidies for newly constructed properties in areas vulnerable to flooding. Newly constructed properties built during 2025 or later would be subject to rates that reflect up-to-date flood risk information and will not later qualify for a subsidy, and structures built before 2025 in flood zones or that are re-mapped into flood zones would still be eligible for grandfathering subsidies. The bill also requires the
"Back in 2010, when I was chair of the Climate Initiative for the
"Our bill reforms the NFIP to give taxpayers a better deal," said
The NFIP offers flood insurance to property owners, renters and businesses at discounted rates. The NFIP relies on flood insurance rate maps that draw from past experience and, for the most part, disregard the future. While the flood zone maps determine who is obligated to carry flood insurance in any given year and may be useful in setting a single year's flood insurance rates, it does not account for the potential worsening of disasters in following years. Such an underestimation can mislead communities, developers and property owners about the real risk of flooding and results in short-sighted building within flood-prone areas.
These deceptive price signals have also led the program into significant debt. Currently, the NFIP runs a
"If the private sector looks at future flood risk when pricing insurance, why shouldn't the federal government? The current system cheats taxpayers and hides the cost of flooding from homebuyers in perpetuity," said
"The Build for Future Disasters Act of 2020 calls on communities, builders, and homebuyers across the country to be smarter about flood risk and how that risk is changing," said
"In the past few years, we've seen communities from coast to coast devastated by an increasing number of catastrophic flooding events," said
The bill is supported by
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