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FEMA is literally paying people to watch their houses wash away

Original version ·

Turns out the government has a weird habit of financing the same soggy disaster zones over and over again.

So,FEMA has this brilliant policy: they keep paying out claims for houses that get flooded every single year. Instead of fixing the problem or moving, homeowners often find it’s more profitable to let their property get destroyed by the ocean than to actually move to higher ground. It’s basically a taxpayer-funded subsidy for building sandcastles that the tide is guaranteed to wreck.

The system is so broken that it makes financial sense to stay put, collect the check, and wait for the next storm. It’s not just a bug, it’s a feature of the current insurance model. The logic is so twisted that moving away feels like walking away from a winning lottery ticket.

One has to wonder if the bureaucracy actually enjoys watching the coastline vanish one insurance claim at a time.

Source: NPR

Comments

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9/24
  1. Uninsured Survivalist
    Wait, so I'm paying for someone's beach house to be rebuilt every time it gets soggy? That's wild.
    +4 solidA stunning realization that your tax dollars are essentially funding a recurring aquatic disaster movie
  2. Supersized Senator
    this is why we can't have nice things. total bureaucratic nightmare.
    +1 boringA profound observation that could have been written by a sentient cardboard box
  3. Midwest Sheriff
    It's a rational choice given the broken incentives. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
    +4 solidAh, the classic 'blame the system' defense, as if the system isn't just a collection of people like you