David Hall wrote:

I really do not understand that statement. If you want to build your
house on a floodplain and some government flunky doesn't say "you are
not allowed to do that" then the government should become responsible
for your stupidity (or your desire to live in a floodplain)? On the
one hand, I do not think it is the Government's business to tell me
whether or not I can build my house on the floodplain, but on the
other, if I do it should be my problem. It would be nice for them to
let me know that it is a floodplain though. I MIGHT even be willing to
accept some reasonable building code stipulations such as flow-through
designs for the first floor, etc. But "permitting" me to use my own
land to build my own home......


Dave Hall

individuals building on their own land really aren't the problem. it's
large scale commercial developers buying up what should probably be
farmland or wilds and plonking down thousands of units and expecting
fema to fix it when it all washes away that is the problem....


Well, the fact that "we" expect FEMA to take care of it seems a problem. Again,
I see no problem with Government telling us that the house we are going to
build or buy is on a floodplain or even possibly some required building code
modifications based on location such as roof straps in hurricane areas or flow
through first floor construction in stream floodplain areas (although I am not
fully convinced that these should be more than strong suggestions). Once we
know these things and decide to build there (or buy there) anyway it should be
our problem. If someone wants to sell us insurance to guard against the
probability of our risks occuring fine, but that should be a market decision.
If nobody is willing to sell us such insurance, that seems a real good
indicator of our stupidity. Further, if mortgage lenders weren't insured by the
government against issuing stupid loans to stupid people then you wouldn't see
many people buying homes that had that much risk as there wouldn't be loans
available. Essentially, we encourage people to build and buy where nobody would
be able to afford to do so in a free market by giving government security
against stupidity and then we want the Government to tell us we can't do these
stupid things that they subsidize and then we want government to pay for our
stupidity if they fail to make it illegal to, say. build a house anywhere in
Florida or within 3 miles of a river. Come on people, are we really small
children in need of such nannying?

Dave Hall

Don't pick on Florida. Remember the California mudslides, where "we" paid
to rebuild homes for millionaires, more than once?
Joe