<p>Everyone owning property in most of the greater NO area is required to have flood insurance - sure some people go bare, just as some do without homeowner’s, but those with a mortgage don’t. For example, I think practically all of Orleans parish is a flood zone.
Over here in Alabama, we have problems because we have people flooded out without insurance - people who have lived in the same house for 40 years, outside the required flood zone, never been flooded, never close - flooded in Katrina. It is hard to insure against the once in a hundred years stuff.</p>
<p>If we can rebuild Iraq, we can rebuild our own city</p>
<p>Your syllogism rests upon an unproven predicate.</p>
<p>
Au contraire. Katrina was a once in a generation event; there have been relatively few hurricanes of this strength to make landfall in the United States, and New Orleans is only one dot on a map out of a vast coastline. </p>
<p>The flooding was a much more likely event, but again, New Orleans had precautions in place to deal with them. These precautions were overcome by this rare occurrence; not rebuilding New Orleans would be like not rebuilding the areas of Thailand devastated by the tsunami last winter. A freak occurrence created a special set of circumstances that were much more common, but of a greater magnitude than had been prepared for.</p>
<p>The people of New Orleans had attempted to take even greater precautions to protect their city, but, as pointed out on other threads, federal funding was not available.</p>
<p>I also wonder if flood insurance is even available in New Orleans. In Florida, house insurance is either sky-high or no longer available because of last year’s hurricane season. If the situation in New Orleans was as common as mootmom suggests, insurance would be unavailable for it; the insurers would stand to lose too much money.</p>
<p>Flood insurance is available in all areas of the US, including New Orleans - but always must be purchased via the National Flood Insurance program, which is actually run by FEMA. So basically its the way that homeowners pay into the system that also provides disaster relief. It is required by law for home buyers in flood zones to purchase flood insurance to secure financing - but if there is no mortgage, that would not be required. Most of the homes owned in the poorer areas of NO were NOT insured, because many homes have not been recently purchased but have been owned by families for multiple generations - and of course most of these families simply don’t have the money to pay for extra insurance.</p>
<p>In HI, you have to live within a set distance from the ocean to QUALIFY for flood insurance. If you have a mortgage & live in a flood zone, you MUST get flood insurance. If you’re outside the distance, you CAN’T get flood insurance. We are pretty much at sea level for most of the state, but most of us can’t get flood insurance because we live too far (tho if we had a bad tsunami, most of us would be wiped out like Kauai was with Iniki). Hawaii real estate is still very expensive & most of us can’t think of anywhere else we’d want to live. I’m sure many folks in the Gulf area feel the same way.</p>