Biggert-Waters legislation must be amended (from Asbury Park Press)

Written by

Kathleen Sweeney

December 18th, 2013

In light of Monday’s editorial regarding flood insurance, “Don’t stall flood insurance rates,” I felt compelled to write in the hopes that maybe the Press will understand the magnitude of the devastation the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Act of 2012 is causing.

If you had read the 60-page Biggert-Waters bill, you would know that before its implementation, an affordability study was to have been conducted. It was not. In fact, because this bill was hidden inside a transportation bill, the people who signed it admitted they never even read it. They needed money for their infrastructure and the transportation bill provided it, so they just signed the whole thing without reading it.

Even Maxine Waters herself, the co-author of the bill, stated, “Time and again, I have made clear that I am committed to resolving the problems that have resulted from the implementation of the B/W Act, and we have brought together a broad bipartisan coalition of the House and Senate to do so.”

Waters sent a letter to Stop FEMA Now the night before the September national rally protesting the changes to the flood insurance program and stated that she was unaware of the consequences her bill was causing.

This bill threatens to cause widespread economic destruction throughout America, and will negatively affect millions of homeowners living near any body of water, be it an ocean, bay, lagoon, lake, river, stream or babbling brook.

Many people in New Jersey are still not back in their homes. They are paying rent, plus mortgage payments and flood insurance premiums on homes that they can’t even live in because they can’t afford to fix them and they still have not gotten any assistance from FEMA. And yet, FEMA is going to raise its premiums? Do you see how crazy that is?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that people simply cannot afford this and it will result in widespread abandonment of properties. It will reduce tax bases and place the burden on homeowners inland from the coast.

It will devalue real estate and cause economic destruction to businesses far and wide. This affects lower- and middle-income homeowners all over the state and nation.

The people who say they don’t want to subsidize insurance premiums for the rich don’t understand that the rich make up an extremely low percentage of coastal homeowners.

These are not people who are looking for handouts, and they do not feel they should get an entitlement. They are average people who bought homes at the Shore, and were paying for an insurance policy that they didn’t even know was subsidized by the government until Sandy because they got their policy through private insurers. Now, their premiums can be as high as a man in Florida whose rate went from $400 to $44,000 a year. No one can really expect the average working-class citizen to pay a ridiculously high rate such as that.

In cases of repetitive flooding, premiums should be higher, but in cases where this was a once-in-a-lifetime event, or in cases where there was no flooding at all, amendments should be made, and made quickly before so many lives are completely destroyed.

Kathleen Sweeney, of Lavallette, is a member of Stop FEMA Now.