Jack Albrecht
1 min readOct 6, 2022

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Fortunately, this is one area where "the market" if left uncorrupted (a big "if") will solve this problem.

My mom lives in Houston. The subdivision where she lives is right next to a bayou (that is Texan for "creek") that floods periodically. Prior to being a subdivision, rice was farmed there.

Over the last 40+ years my parents (and now my widowed mom) have lived there, the lower part of the subdivision has been ever more frequently flooded. To the point that the terms "100-year-flood" and "500-year-flood" have become bad jokes. How can you have three 100-year-floods and a 500-year-flood in 10 years?

The result has been that the lower part of the subdivision is now about 1/2 empty. After each major flood, a few houses are fixed, but more are removed to the point that the curbs are recast and the street addresses removed (they are painted on normally). Why? Because insurance companies aren't in business to lose money and refuse to pay multiple times to rebuild.

If we can keep cronyism from backstopping flood insurance at the federal level, the insurance industry will make rebuilding in Florida financially non-viable.

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Jack Albrecht
Jack Albrecht

Written by Jack Albrecht

US expatriate living in the EU; seeing the world from both sides of the Atlantic.

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