Fuck the beach dwellers

I'm reading my local paper, on the front page is a well-off white woman complaining about the government not giving her grant money to rebuild her beach house . Think about that, rebuild on a beach so it can be washed away again so we as taxpayers can send her more money. She wants the bailout for the rich Texans while millions in Texas go without healthcare. My take on it, Fuk-um. Spend the money on health care! Wonder who she voted for?


"While she received about $80,000 from insurance, that money had to go to her mortgage company to pay off the house note." Now she wants taxpayers to build her a new home

Who will be part of the OK team, whether or not you get the grant? It's Texas, come on you know it's going to be faith-based "Restore and Rebuild is a collaborative of social service and faith-based agencies that has been providing house repair services and unmet needs since the storm." "3. Proof of damage document from an entity such as FEMA, SBA or a recognized faith-based organization"
http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=f2a8f64d7fc53c83

Photo http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=a706678b5469f670

Screw her!

I lived in and around that beach for years, people continue to build there. When will that insanity stop? Galveston and the islands around it are barrier islands, what ever you put on it becomes part of that barrier, or as I like to call it, hurricane food.

:puke:

I remember in the 50s and early 60s, people built beach houses with the full expectation that they would be washed away.
One of my favorites was a simple A-Frame built UP on pilings on a barrier island between Pensacola and Ft Walton. The construction was bare essentials, furnished with old appliances and 2nd hand (but comfortable) furniture.
If it all got washed away...It was "Oh well. We'll put it back next Spring."
This was NOT a primary residence, but rather a "Fishing/Beach Camp".

There are NOW multi-million dollar luxury condominiums in the same location.

but even in a 2000 year old religious book it tells you not to build your house on sand. Why should anybody else have to pay for it if it washes away.

of your foolish actions and being responsible for them. I think that would include continuing to build houses on a beach that will continue to erode and is prone to hurricanes.

In other words, cause/effect.

Time after time. Not just beach property.

we're going to be talking about saying "fuck 'em" to a LOT of people. People said that about NO after Katrina, too.

natural disasters? :shrug:

I was also talking about the people in the OP. I think we're in agreement.

I totally agree with what you're saying

in Katrina didn't live on a barrier island, they lived in poor neighborhoods behind poorly built seawalls. They were told they were protected.

mostly from RWers about people 'dumb enough to live below sea level' etc etc. What I'm saying is that most regions have some kind of native natural disaster that threatens homes, and that we shouldn't blame victims.

it's just that the rich who choose to live in disaster regions are victims who need our help and the poor who are forced to live in similar areas are just poor and too stupid to move. The secret is to get the poor to move so we can develop that prime real estate so the next poor rich victims can be bailed out.

in this country. 100% of Japans population.....


Earthquakes are what they are. The Pacific Ring of Fire well over a billion inhabitants. It is also one of the wealthiest 'rings' in the world.

Earthquake damage - all but the worst case 8.0+ - can be dramatically reduced w/ building codes. CA and Japan are leading the way (OK- Japan is leading the way...).

A fire sweeping through could happen ANYWHERE. AN earthquake? The same thing. Mudslide? SO no one should live near a hill?

I agree with your point, but lumping all natural disasters together is disingenuous.

nt

natural disaster prone areas too. I said:

"Same with mudslide, wildfires, earthquakes, and flooding areas. Time after time."

They are a combination of the dry climate, high temps, high winds, vertical terrain, and explosive vegetation.
You never see these kinds of fires in mountainous areas with hardwood vegetation and higher humidities.
(Like the area where I live, the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas. I am also a firefighter.)

Most of the people building in the HILLS outside LA KNOW the fire potential.
The views from the hills are spectacular, and it is COOL living on the hillsides, but it IS dangerous.

than wildfires and flooding that happen every year or two. Anchorage was pretty well destroyed by an earthquake once -- but it was 45 years ago, not something that happens often.

See honey, what you do is take out another loan to rebuild based on the value your improved land will have when completed. Your responsibility. Or, you can sell your plot of dirt and go elsewhere. It's just that simple.

to buy her a new one. Now on the other hand, she doesn't want us to give brown people health care.

shit in the other, as I've heard tell.

Don't we all?

It's fuck you capitalism. Fuck you to the poor ( poor being 250k or less ) , socialism for the rich.

You can afford to live on the beach, you get bailed out.

You can't, well.... fuck you.

purchase enough insurance.

Pay off the loan and get a new loan, if the storm had not hit she would still be paying on the $80,000 to the mortgage company. You don't get a free house and your mortgage paid off because a storm hit.

If she only got $80,000 from her insurance company, I would think that the problem lies with the insurance industries' stance that she wasn't entitled to the full payoff because her house was not destroyed by winds but by the storm surge.

As the insurance industry did after Katrina. They all got together and agreed to not pay off claims if storm surge was involved. Take my situation. My home was a small cottage built in 1948. It had survived past hurricanes like Camille and Betsy. Sure, it may have taken on water during Camille, but it wasn't totally destroyed, flattened by the winds and pushed into the street by the surge like what happened to it during Katrina.

I lived in my house since 1986, paying insurance the entire time, first renters and then homeowners when I finally had the chance to purchase. My mortgage company only required homeowners as my house was not in a flood zone though it was on the bay. It was on high ground above the flood zone. I paid higher insurance premiums because of its location and I was willing to do so because of my location.

When the insurance company finally sent an engineer out to survey my damage three months after my house was destroyed, he agreed that the total destruction was due to the winds or a tornado before the surge came. But, he cautioned, he was not the one that made the call. He would have to turn in his report and a second pair of eyes would have to inspect my damage. The second pair of eyes never showed but I did get a letter advising me my claim was denied because my house was destroyed by the surge.

Now mind you, in the interim I hired my own expert to review the weather data and my destruction. That expert determined that my house was battered by hurricane winds for over 8 hours before the surge came. The roof of my house had been blown off and was sitting in my yard. The house had been compromised and collapsed and when the surge came it pushed my debris and my roof into the street and into my across the street neighbor's yard.

Since I was not required to have flood insurance I never got it, I was assured I was not in a flood zone.

I had to sue my insurance company and that litigation lasted for years until I finally settled for a portion of what I was entitled to. You see I settled because I was beat down. I couldn't fight it any longer, it just wasn't in me.

While I was without a house, living in a fema trailer, I continued to pay the full premium on my house that did not exist. I didn't want to loose the insurance. Carriers had stopped writing along the coast. Once I finished building a new home, my premium was doubled and this year they tacked on a 15% surcharge for having to pay my claim. That is in addition to the flood insurance I had to buy.

And please remember, we had no jobs after the storm. First there was not utilities and the roadways were not passable and many of the businesses couldn't open until they went through extensive repair and/or were rebuilt entirely. Had the insurance companies paid the full amount of our claims and had they paid in a timely fashion, the need for grants would not have been so high and we would have rebuilt quicker.

Like most all of the problems we face in our society today, the problems are caused by the insurance companies. We need insurance reform. The labeling of the efforts to improve health care is not accurate. It is not health care reform that is being debated. It is health insurance reform that is being discussed.

Many employers have trouble hiring because of the high cost of required insurance. Their premiums are outrageous. I know one contractor that can't afford to bid on jobs because of the increase in the required insurance premiums.

Sorry for ranting on, but I have trouble with people who blame the homeowners as readily as you have. There is much more to things than the fact that she must be well off if she lives on the beach. Plenty of ordinary folks like me were fortunate to have nice views in our tiny homes and we paid our insurance premiums for years with very few, if any claims, being made.

The greedy insurance bastards made a 44 billion dollar profit in 2005 that grew to 60 billion in 2006, despite Katrina and Rita and Wilma. That should tell you something.

Let me edit here to add that we had to continue to pay the mortgage on the nonexisting homes. Sure, they offered us a 3 month grace period which ended up being a balloon note tacked on to the existing mortgage. And remember, we were unemployed, but we still had to pay our bills and meet our mortgages.

my anger at beach dwellers goes way back, back to the days when they tried to fence in the beach all the way to the water line down towards Surfside and San Louis Pass. Those homes are all gone now and the families that owned them want us to pay to rebuild them. That area became a stronghold for the elite who want to ban cars so they can drive golf carts everywhere. These people want to exclude you and I. Would you hate having to pay higher premiums because I keep building on top of a volcano?

And she didn't get the insurance she had been paying for over the 20 year time.

And the insurance companies continue to show record profits. The first bailouts of the Bush administration was the federal grants awarded because the government wouldn't hold the insurance company responsible for their debts.

Your anger about the closing off of the beach is understandable. I remember the days when we could drive along Galveston beaches.

But, it is not reasonable to allow that anger to cloud your view relative to these issues.

The folks in NOLA live in a bowl, well below sea level. Always have. Their situation is more akin to you building on the volcano yet you have compassion for their situation.

with you on how bad insurance companies screwed people, they should be in prison. My compliant is the people who build on beaches on barrier islands. Those houses will be destroyed at some point, no question about it. Beaches are meant to enjoy, not carve up and live on. They should not be private enclaves for the rich.

I can't imagine anyone building on our barrier islands. As a matter of fact, the government bought those and now has plans to rebuild them, to restore them to their size and state before Hurricane Camille so that they can protect our coast line.

The fact of the matter is, she owned the land and she paid her insurance and higher premiums than inland homeowners. She has been cheated and the government is allowing it. The government allows the insurance industry to gather together to decide how they will deny all claims and force the homeowners to carry the burden to prove they are entitled to their claim.

It isn't right.

Galveston. It was a number of years ago. When we lost our roof in Texas City, and the wall in Galveston we had to pay for it. There wasn't grants for us back then. I totally agree with you though 100%, the insurance companies have cheated families to death down there. The state of Texas has always supported that practice, you could say that insurance companies actually run Texas. Some of those guys need to be in prison.

because they don't call it what it is and they don't call for a total reform of the entire industry. The insurance company needs to be regulated. Can you imagine any other industry that gets together to set prices or that decides on how to handle claims they way they do.

The McCarran-Ferguson Act that was passed in 1945 and that exempts the
state-regulated property-casualty insurance industry from important sections of the federal antitrust laws needs to be repealed.

if it was regulated back when I lived in Texas? When my mom and dad lost their roof and I lost a wall in Galveston the companies payed up real fast.

caused the damage. Thus you homeowners policy covered the damage, paid the claim.

That same insurance company today is allowed to have a hurricane policy. It doesn't give you better coverage, it just allows them to require a higher deductible as a result of hurricane damage.

As I said, the insurance companies got together and decided to deny all claims (especially slabber's claims) based on the position that the homes were destroyed by the surge. That damage was to be covered by flood insurance, if you had it. Of course, there were plenty of homes like mine that were destroyed by the winds before the surge, but that didn't matter to the insurance companies.

There were even homes that had both flood and homeowners insurance who were denied by both. The flood insurance folks said the home was destroyed by the winds and the homeowner insurance folks said the home was destroyed by the flood. People had to sue both insurance companies.

People had to sue to prove their claims, though the state law provides that the insurance company has the burden of proof.

So it isn't as simple as it was back when. The industry goes out of its way to deny claims.

The health insurance folks, the homeowner insurance folks, the flood insurance folks - for them it is about the profit and the hell to the folks that pay their premiums.

Glad you are still on DU. My heart went out to everyone faced with all the horror and crisis that Katrina brought about.

I have no idea where a habitat exists that remains free from cataclysm. Not the coastline - and as the ocean levels rise - so will all those properties come under attack. Not much of California - as the earthquake belt is ever expanding - every other year they find more fault lines.

And then there are fires and floods and blizzards and tornados. Also droughts.

If someone knows of a spot that is calamity-proof, pls advise cuz I'd love to move there.

regions. Hell, I even carry earthquake insurance now. You ever know, do you.

:hi:

Here in California, it is very expensive.

And here's a good night :toast: to you and me!

of Metry .. :)

erosion areas. There are places out on Long Island - wealthy conclaves, of course - where the beaches are disappearing fast, and every hurricane demolishes dozens of houses. Yet the homeowners want to rebuild...and the flood insurance is a Federal program.
I can see an argument for putting a stop to this tax-payer underwritten lemming-like behavior.

of those houses that get destroyed almost every year in California mudslides and wonder, how long we will continue paying higher premiums for these people? A mudslide in California affects premiums all over the nation, insurance companies loose a little in a California mudslide and then make it up with higher premiums in the midwest and by denying claims in the south, they never loose.

What if she had been a rich African-American or Asian woman? Would it make a difference?

to assume all sorts of nasty right-wing things about her and have a nice 15 minute hate session. Damn, the bigotry on this site is so obvious and apalling sometimes.

A used FEMA trailer.

only for the brown people

The fema trailers were given to people of all races.

I know, I lived in one 25 months and I am white.

loss. You have to know how disproportionate the numbers of those who suffered according to race though. It is a racial divide, more people of color suffer in most of our recent disasters. No one is picking on you.

:hug:

I've rebuilt and recovered, things are much better than they were.

3 hurricanes, none as powerful as the one you guys went through. My family and my wife's family did. Her family also had FEMA trailers in and around Beaumont.

Katrina blew us all away in more ways than one.

The engineer that surveyed my damage had tears in his eyes as he stood on my slab. He told me he had to do some of the insurance survey work at ground zero at the WTC after 9/11. He said that was horrible but it was nothing like what he had seen since he had been on the Coast after Katrina. He said that the damage at the WTC was limited to several acres but the damage he saw on the Coast was for miles and miles, neighborhood after neighborhood.

Disaster workers and volunteers ended up with PTSD after working here. Guardsmen who had been in Iraq couldn't believe what they saw, it was worst than Iraq.

The damage stretched all along the coast, from Dauphin Island Alabama into Slidell LA. What NOLA experienced was not the hurricane destruction, the winds and the fury and the surge. Their levies failed after it was thought they had dodged the bullet. The surge that wiped us out had to go somewhere and their levies couldn't protect them.

I watched the water rise 9 feet in the house I evacuated to, more than 10 miles inland, 2 miles from a small tributary of the river. The area had never seen the storm surge before.

Katrina was a mother, the fema trailer a blessing. They are crap little things with no insulation and poor ventilation, but it gave me a roof over my head.

and every single person I know who got a FEMA trailer after Wilma was white.

http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/08/08/formaldehyde-in-fema-travel-trailers-making-people-sick/

:eyes:

Loved a skit Michael Moore did years ago taking a bunch of people (many different minorities) to a private island to play on the beach!

and early 80s I remember some homeowners put barricades from their house all the way down to the beach. This is totally against Texas law. Lawsuits were being filed all over the place. I took my jeep down there one night and hooked on to the pilings and pulled them all down. I was a little drunk.

Tax money goes to these folks regular as clockwork. Where are their bootstraps, eh? Come to think of it, redline the entire state of California. We're all fools for living here.

I don't know how "well-off" this woman is, but if she qualifies, she qualifies, and if she doesn't, she doesn't. If it's her primary residence, she probably has a case.

Hekate

She wants more. She's not entitled to it.

Furthermore, considering that people displaced by Katrina STILL haven't been made whole I say the wench can get in line and wait until the people who were made homeless in Katrina get their houses rebuilt.

Katrina happened 4 years ago and no one says boo but we're supposed to give a shit about some wealthy woman complaining about how long it's taking? I couldn't care less.

My homeowner's policy supposedly cover replacement value which, presumably, covers the cost of replacing the home that is lost.

It's entirely possible that at one time 80 grand was replacement value. That it isn't now is due to inflation. That she didn't update her policy doesn't change the fact that her insurance paid out 80 grand which she used to pay off the mortgage. She owns the lot, she can get a mortgage and another house.

while I pull out all of the words you crammed in my mouth. OK, got um. My OP dealt with people building houses on barrier islands in areas affected by hurricanes almost every year.

with the insurance money (the right thing to do.)

Now she can get a loan and rebuild.

I live in tornado alley but we can go literally decades without a damaging tornado. But some areas are hit by hurricanes repeatedly. It seems silly to keep rebuilding in an area susceptible to repetitive natural disasters.

to hurricane-prone oceanfront areas. Having lived in both places, I was much more likely to suffer flooding and wind damage at my coastal residence than to ever see a tornado in tornado alley--let alone have it hit my house. And much of the country has a risk of tornadoes, anyway--from Colorado eastward to the Atlantic coast. Not nearly the same risk as building a beach house in Galveston, which is just foolish.

It's not as though every 10 years a tornado comes and flattens every house in the state of Kansas

and it's not exactly a rare specimen. There's a reason stormchasers have to work so hard to find tornadoes. There's no such thing as storm-chasing hurricanes. Edit to add--and most tornadoes don't do any harm. The only one I was ever priveleged enough to witness (from a couple miles' distance, in South Dakota) was only a brief F-1/F-2.

New Orleans, count the vacant houses and empty slabs in the neighborhoods in which people of color lived. Now go to white neighborhoods in New Orleans, Galveston, and Beaumont and count the abandoned houses and empty slabs. Seriously, I can't believe I'm having to address this.

It is in the article you link to.

The money to rebuild has been allocated to the area, the money's there. Either she'll qualify or she wont. But she's not some rich lady wanting the government to rebuild her massive beach estate, they way your post makes it sound. Which further calls into question why you see fit to highlight her race. Were she an African American who lived in a 1300 sq ft house and only had Soc. Sec. as an income, would you have even posted?

Wish I could unrec this thread again.

So she doesn't deserve any help, even if she's just on Social Security.

I'm sure the OP thinks my family deserved to lose their houses in Ike since they're white too (though not on a beach). :eyes:

that's just a stupid thing to say. Of course I don't want anyone to loose their homes. I don't want to buy homes for people on beaches that will probably blow away again within 10 to 20 years again. Do you want to keep paying for those? Of course you knew what I was saying you just wanted to fight and stuff.

Hudreds of thousands (maybe millions) of lower & middle income people have their one and only home in low lying coastal areas.

By your logic, everyone in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans "had it coming".

very seldom live in beach houses on the west side of Galveston

Live in a travel trailer that you can move out of the way of the storms - take your home with you when you evacuate and you also won't need a motel room. That's what I would do if I were lucky enough to own beach front land. Be a turtle.

That said, I wish no one were allowed to permanently live on the coast. I wish coast lines were kept natural and open to everyone.

I support making this insurance available to long time inhabitants but allowing it to be applied to new construction is nuts. The cost of the next 'big one' is going to be astronomical, and it is a gift to developers, allowing them to build any old place with the promise that Uncle Sam will pick up the tab when Nature invariably does her thing. Not to mention the ruination of so much superb habitat, the SC coast is cause for weeping these days.

when there are so many other people with no home at all. Its not right.

I feel the same way about those who want Federal money to rebuild that town as well.

:dunce:

After all, it was the failure of the federally maintained levees that caused the flooding in the first place. Many NOLA bloggers, in fact, call it the "Federal Flood".

edit: spelling

expect to be flooded.

Live under sea level...well...expect to be flooded.

expect to be flooded.

No need to waste projected federal and state funds on building underground hydraulic systems to protect Chicago from storm water runoff since it will be under water someday, nor levees in the Illinois flood plain since only 3% of it population lives there. Since there are two major river that cause flooding, the Illinois River and the Mississippi River, rebuilding the 100 yr old levees is a waste of money.

http://www.illinoisfloods.org/publications.html
http://www.illinoisfloodmaps.org

Let's move all the art from the Arts Institute to a better place, far away from the Midwest, especially since the entire region is a flood plain.





Also, forget about the Midwest in general, since much of it is in a major flood plain.

That's why I live on the third floor.

moving and disintegrating every day and it's well documented. Yet the state and feds still insure the well-to-do who build on those precarious sites. The main reason being that many of the folks who build their vacation homes there (which most of them are) are legislators or business people with lots of influence (campaign donations) who have undue influence. So they protect their investments at any cost, while many of our citizens can't even get insurance.