Posted: Thursday, September 24, 2015 10:30 am
In an effort to best determine how to assist those in flood zones, the city has launched a survey to see how proposed changes to federal flood maps and flood insurance premiums will affect residents across the five boroughs and how to best mitigate damages from future floods.
“The City is concerned about the impact of rising flood insurance costs on its residents,” Samuel Breidbart, spokesman for the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations, said in an email. “For a home newly mapped into the floodplain, a $500 annual premium could easily rise over time to $5,000 or even $10,000 for the same amount of coverage. This increase in flood insurance premiums directly impacts neighborhood stability and housing affordability, especially for working and middle class New Yorkers.”
The survey is going out to hundreds of people citywide and in Queens will be sent out to residents of Howard Beach, Hamilton Beach, Broad Channel, the Rockaways, Astoria, Long Island City, Hunters Point, Rosedale, Douglaston, Little Neck, Beechhurst, Whitestone, Malba and College Point, Breidbart said.
Congress last year passed legislation that delayed premium increases in flood insurance rates mandated under the Biggert-Waters Act of 2012, but many homeowners still face the looming threat of increased premiums because the 2014 law mainly applies to those who had flood insurance prior to its passing. Higher premiums will kick in for everyone in 2017.
In asking how the increased premiums will affect families, Breidbart said the city “hopes to quantify the financial challenge of rising premiums for New Yorkers in order to propose solutions at a local, State and Federal level” including “mitigation loans or means-tested vouchers coupled with mitigation grants” or what type of flood mitigation projects could be implemented in coastal communities.
How much a homeowner pays in flood insurance is determined by which flood zone he or she falls in on maps created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA is planning changes to the flood maps, which could force some homeowners to pay an even higher premium or buy flood insurance when they previously did not have to.
The city has challenged FEMA on its proposed flood map changes, claiming that thousands of people citywide would be inaccurately included in a flood zone.
FEMA’s new flood maps are expected to go into effect by late 2016 or early 2017, but that could be delayed due to the city’s appeal of them. The new maps had put much of New Howard Beach and Lindenwood, two neighborhoods the city says should not be in a flood zone, into one.
The first 700 people who respond to the survey will receive a $50 gift card and an elevation certificate — a flood insurance document used to determine “the height of the lowest living floor of a property owner’s home or building as compared to the expected flood height in a 1% annual storm,” Breidbart said in his email.
The document is needed to determine the cost of flood insurance for an individual property.
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