Now, though, the costs for Mr. Doyle are about to jump to as much as $15,000 annually over the next decade.
Like many in the New York region, he is facing a series of events that are having a stark impact on rates: an overhaul of the federal flood insurance program last year, the adoption of new flood maps for high-risk areas, and the impact of Hurricane Sandy.
“I could live with $1,500,” said Mr. Doyle, a resident of the Belle Harbor neighborhood. “But $9,000, $15,000? There is no way on God’s green earth I can pay that.”
As a result, government officials, grass-roots organizations and the residents themselves are mobilizing to prevent those higher premiums from taking hold.
In Brick Township, N.J., local officials have paid a mapping expert to obtain certification in floodplain technology to challenge the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new flood maps.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has proposed changes to make flood insurance more affordable and accessible.
Senators from flood-prone states, including New York, New Jersey and Louisiana, have offered amendments and bills to extend the time frame over which the steep rates go into effect.
“We have a lot of people around the country who are just beginning to learn about this,” said Dan Mundy, a resident of Broad Channel, Queens, who is a local activist and a retired firefighter. “When they find out about it, they flip out.”
At the root of the fury is the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Act.
Passed by Congress in 2012, before Hurricane Sandy shellacked New York and New Jersey, the act reauthorized the National Flood Insurance Program. Lawmakers agreed that they had to make changes because the program was $18 billion in debt.
“Biggert-Waters was passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support,” said Carolyn Koursky, a fellow at Resources for the Future, a research group that has focused on flood insurance. “The right and left were aligned in moving toward risk-based rates.”
The legislation called for the gradual elimination of long-term subsidies that had kept down rates for homes in flood zones.
Then came the hurricane last October.
Thousands of homes in the New York region suffered significant damage.
FEMA rushed to revise maps that had been long overdue, placing far more people in the floodplain.
Mayor Bloomberg’s office said that by the 2050s, 800,000 New Yorkers would live in the 100-year-floodplain, more than double the current number.
Because of these changes, the mayor’s office estimates that almost 20,000 New York homes could face sharply higher premiums.
“The risk that New York faces is a combination of residents being priced out of their homes and realistic mitigation measures not being incentivized by the strategy of the federal flood insurance program,” Seth Pinsky, a senior mayoral aide, said.
Mr. Pinsky directed the Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency, set up by the mayor after the storm.
The group released a voluminous report last month that recommended that Biggert-Waters be amended so that residents could buy cheaper insurance with higher deductibles.
The report also called on FEMA to give financial credit to people who undertake renovations to protect their property, like moving boilers from the basement to the first floor.
Currently, the only way to obtain lower rates is to raise a home above certain elevation levels. That can be difficult in New York, where the housing stock is old, and homes are often attached to adjacent buildings.
Economists and insurance experts said the program needed to be overhauled to make it financially viable.
“The program is $26 billion in debt and much of that debt is borne by federal taxpayers who do not have flood insurance,” said Frank W. Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America. “They are subsidizing those that do.”
The prospect of such steep increases has also stirred an outcry on the Jersey Shore.
Stephen C. Acropolis, mayor of Brick Township, used to pay $1,200 annually for flood insurance. His rates could go as high as $10,000 under Biggert-Waters.
“I will not pay $10,000 for flood insurance because the most I will get for my house is $80,000 to $90,000 to repair it” if it is damaged in a storm, he said. “Every 10 years, I will pay for my house to be totally replaced. It doesn’t make any sense.”
When FEMA released new maps in December 2012, many residents of communities like Brick Township said they were shocked.
The maps put more than 4,000 homes in the township into the riskiest flood area (called the “velocity zone,” or V Zone). Those houses would eventually face annual insurance rates of $31,500, up from as low as $1,000, Mr. Acropolis said.
In protest, the town teamed up with neighboring Toms River to pay for a mapping expert to obtain certification in the advanced software used to measure flood plains.
The expert, Mr. Acropolis said, “will lobby, or produce our own scientific data to say the way FEMA did it was off,” Mr. Acropolis said.
Last month, FEMA revised its New Jersey maps and now only 850 people fall into the V Zone in Brick Township. But residents still face significant rate increases.
In December, George Kasimos, a real estate broker in Toms River, was put into a V Zone, which would have taken his rates to over $30,000 annually.
Now he is in a less risky zone, but he still has to raise his home three feet. His flood insurance will be $8,300 a year, he said.
“Do you think the average homeowner can afford a $600-a-month increase in flood insurance premiums or the cost to raise their homes?”
In January, Mr. Kasimos founded “StopFemaNow,” a Facebook page where he tried to figure out whether he should rebuild, elevate or do both.
The page now has 10,000 members who often discuss efforts to revamp the Biggert-Waters law.
Lawmakers have proposed several amendments and bills to reduce the impact of the legislation, though it is unclear whether any will pass.
When the bill was approved in the Senate in 2012, it was attached to a transportation bill and no debate was permitted.
One effect seems to be clear: Many people around the country may be considering walking away from their insurance, calling into question the premise of the legislation, which was to make the flood insurance program financially sustainable.
Eddie Deuron, an engineer for Chevron who lives in Louisiana, has paid flood insurance rates of $400 to $725 for 35 years. Now he has heard that he will pay $9,500 a year.
“I’d send it back in a naked envelope,” he said. “I would drop it.”
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