85% of Harris county residents do not have flood insurance. Mortgage companies colluded with homeowners, land lords, and politicians to complain about big government regulations making people's homes too expensive by requiring it.
And now here are those mortgage companies and homeowners and landlords asking to be bailed out, to rebuild, to change no behavior.
This is worse than just paying people to sit on the sofa. That's cheap compared to this. At least they spend that money and it involves no asset destruction. Houston is basically asking the country to refund bad choices, transfer wealth back into physical assets located in coastal Texas, which will inevitably be destroyed again at some point in the future.
shrug
Fine. But I think flood insurance should be mandatory. And it should be at cost (no profit). But it should not be subsidized. And I think that's the same for any coastal area. And for people who live in fire prone forest areas.
But I will bet money that Ted Cruz and Texas politicians will be begging for more money than Katrina. And the next time there's a hurricane not in Texas they'll all bitch and moan about how most of that money is pork, and then vote against it just like they did with hurricane Sandy.