well, because if the insurance companies won’t foot the bill, someone has to eventually. and if you make the people in these houses do so instead of the government, you’re going to have a lot of homeless people–especially in CA where housing is so expensive. it’s obviously better to rehouse people than let them go homeless. in this case especially: as noted in my other comment, most of those people are going to have been owners who simply didn’t have informed risk on what they were buying.
also from another perspective: it’s really not a matter of if countries do this, but when. the US is already resettling people on these grounds from flooding, storm surge, and coastal erosion, for example–the standard that it is both necessary and desirable to resettle people voluntarily at government expense is already set. since it is, we should make use of it preemptively, and this would be a good example of when and where to do it.
well, because if the insurance companies won’t foot the bill, someone has to eventually. and if you make the people in these houses do so instead of the government, you’re going to have a lot of homeless people–especially in CA where housing is so expensive. it’s obviously better to rehouse people than let them go homeless. in this case especially: as noted in my other comment, most of those people are going to have been owners who simply didn’t have informed risk on what they were buying.
also from another perspective: it’s really not a matter of if countries do this, but when. the US is already resettling people on these grounds from flooding, storm surge, and coastal erosion, for example–the standard that it is both necessary and desirable to resettle people voluntarily at government expense is already set. since it is, we should make use of it preemptively, and this would be a good example of when and where to do it.