There's nowhere in Florida that is insurable, though. Hurricanes are regularly wider than the entire state. Even if it just has one-half of the storm hit it, the entire state is still likely to be hit.
I think that's a rather uneducated spoonfed media hyperbole. Hurricanes do damage for sure, but generally it is to:
- older properties not up to code
- coastal properties
Plenty of places in the state which are insurable, and at minimal risk, but are getting steamrolled by insurance increases. A good chunk of that is roofing insurance fraud. Nobody pays to reroof anymore out of their own pocket.
My comment is in response to a discussion about flood insurance. I wasn't intending to say every year hurricanes scrape the peninsula back to top soil and everything must be rebuilt completely. Are there parts of Florida that aren't flooded by every hurricane?
Rate increases for insurance in lower risk zones are what pay for repairs in higher risk zones. How many rate increases will it take before most people can't afford insurance? 76% of Florida's population lives in coastal counties[1] and if the remaining 24% of the population has to pay more to insure those high risk coastal properties, but can't (or won't) then it sounds like there is at the very least an insurability crisis which needs addressed.
Most damage is from flooding due to storm surge which exists on coastlines. Wind and power outages happen and can take down trees just like elsewhere in the world but the massive destruction is caused by the force and amount of water on the coasts.
Building codes exist on probability of what can happen. When buildings were built, they had codes to follow based on the current time. When they are destroyed, they are rebuilt with new codes such as on stilts, better windows, different materials, etc. It isn’t like we just keep building the same building and expect things to change.
If you do live on the coast anywhere in the US, it should be a general assumption that at some point, that water is gonna be in your house or that your house is gonna be taken out by the water over its existence.
Most of the state lives in coastal counties, which are the highest risk areas as you mentioned. There isn't much "low risk" real estate to help pay for the high risk areas. Flooding in an already humid environment usually means mold in the house so I can't imagine there are many places that aren't at least somewhat flooded by a statewide hurricane.
Just because a hurricane hits Miami doesn't mean the entire state feels it. It rains, streets may get backed up with water around the sewer just like there was a thaw of snow in northern states. You would be surprised how much of a city on the water is not in a flood zone.
You want to live on the water, you are mandatory to pay the fees to maintain insurance if you have a loan or if you own, you can roll the dice and not. Each storm causes areas that may have not been hit in decades to have higher premiums and areas that have never felt a storm in decades that are older builds get knocked down and rebuilt with new code and higher up to prevent another wipe out.
For the purpose of insurance, a 1% annual risk of flood is categorized as high risk. It calculates out to a 26% risk of being flooded at least once in a 30 year mortgage. "Moderate risk" is considered flooding between every 100-500 years.
Having weathered many, many hurricanes, it's a bit misleading to say this. The strength of a hurricane is basically an exponential decay function of distance from the eye. The eye wall destroys things. The immediate surrounding rain bands are equivalent to a bad, windy thunderstorm and throw stuff around (though they can reach heavily damaging strength in a Cat 4 or 5). The outer rain bands are any other rainstorm. Flooding is the most likely source of damage, and storm surge is a function of which side of the storm hits you as it turns counter-clockwise.
If you can't get a private company to insure you, the government should (and does) insure you as a last resort, usually more expensive than any commercial insurance but still at a loss. But, paying out just to rebuild in the same spot is idiotic. The program should only pay out if you use that money to relocate and/or rebuild somewhere where you can get commercial insurance. If that means you need to move, so be it.
If you can just pay out of pocket to rebuild every few years, that's fine. It's not a human right to live on a beach in a state that gets nailed by a record-setting hurricane every 3 or 4 years (and several times in between).
