6.6M Homes at Risk of Hurricane Damage This Year. Here’s Which States They’re In

6.6M Homes at Risk of Hurricane Damage This Year. Here’s Which States They’re In

REUTERS
By Beth Braverman

As hurricane season gets underway, real estate analytics firm CoreLogic is warning that there are more than 6.6 million U.S. homes at risk of being hit by a storm surge. That could lead to as much at $1.5 trillion in damage.

The homes are in 19 states and the District of Columbia along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Six states account for more than three-quarters of all at-risk homes, with Florida having the most (2.5 million), followed by Louisiana (760,000), New York (465,000), New Jersey (446,148), Texas (441,304) and Virginia (420,052).

Related: How Climate Change Costs Could Soar to the Billions

“The number of hurricanes each year is less important than the location of where the next hurricane will come ashore,” CoreLogic’s senior hazard risk analyst said in a statement. “It only takes one hurricane that pushes storm surge into a major metropolitan area for the damage to tally in the billions of dollars. With new home construction, and any amount of sea-level rise, the number of homes at risk of storm surge damage will continue to increase.” 

The District of Columbia has the lowest number of properties at risk (3,700), followed by New Hampshire (12,400) and Maine (22,500

State Table (Ranked by Number of Homes at Risk)

Rank

State

Extreme

Very High

High

Moderate

Low*

Total

1

Florida

793,204

461,632

524,923

352,102

377,951

2,509,812

2

Louisiana

97,760

104,059

337,495

138,762

82,196

760,272

3

New York

127,325

114,876

131,039

91,294

N/A

464,534

4

New Jersey

116,581

178,668

73,303

77,596

N/A

446,148

5

Texas

45,800

70,894

112,189

116,168

96,253

441,304

6

Virginia

94,260

115,770

98,463

84,015

27,544

420,052

7

South Carolina

107,443

57,327

65,885

46,799

30,961

308,415

8

North Carolina

73,463

51,927

48,595

40,155

37,347

251,487

9

Massachusetts

31,420

65,279

74,413

49,325

N/A

220,437

10

Maryland

47,990

39,966

27,591

28,975

N/A

144,522

11

Georgia

41,970

52,281

28,852

19,190

8,465

150,758

12

Pennsylvania

1,467

45,776

37,983

32,426

N/A

117,652

13

Mississippi

14,809

20,643

29,387

27,507

10,588

102,934

14

Connecticut

25,292

23,656

22,230

26,529

N/A

97,707

15

Alabama

7,403

12,707

10,182

13,749

14,086

58,127

16

Delaware

11,523

10,854

13,528

13,811

N/A

49,716

17

Rhode Island

6,595

5,988

6,720

7,187

N/A

26,490

18

Maine

5,159

2,753

7,368

7,211

N/A

22,491

19

New Hampshire

2,514

3,470

4,234

2,272

N/A

12,490

20

District of Columbia

N/A**

N/A**

545

3,123

N/A

3,668

Total

1,651,978

1,438,526

1,654,925

1,178,196

685,391

6,609,016


* The "Low" risk category is based on Category 5 hurricanes, which are not likely along the northeastern Atlantic coast. States in that area have N/A designated for the Low category due to the extremely low probability of a Category 5 storm affecting that area.
** Washington, D.C. has no Atlantic coastal properties, but can be affected by larger hurricanes that push storm surge into the Potomac River. Category 1 and 2 storms will likely not generate sufficient storm surge to affect properties in Washington, D.C. 

About 90% of Trump Counties Have Received Trade War Farm Aid

FILE PHOTO: A combine drives over stalks of soft red winter wheat during the harvest on a farm in Dixon, Illinois
Jim Young
By The Fiscal Times Staff

President Trump won more than 2,600 of the nation’s 3,000-plus counties in the 2016 election, and residents in nearly 90% of those counties – or more than 2,300 – have received some level of aid from the administration’s Market Facilitation Program, a $16 billion effort that compensates farmers for losses incurred as a result of Trump’s trade war with China.

Drawing on a new report from the Environmental Working Group, The Washington Post’s Philip Bump says the data “show the extent to which [the farm] subsidies overlap with Trump’s base of political support.”

To be fair, about 80% of the counties Hillary Clinton won also received some degree of aid, Bump says, but there are many fewer of them, given the concentration of her supporters in urban areas.

Overall, residents in more than 2,600 counties in the U.S. have received payments from the farm aid program, with the heaviest concentration in the Midwest.

Number of the Day: $1.57

iStockphoto
By The Fiscal Times Staff

A new study from the Bipartisan Policy Center says that Medicare would save $1.57 for every dollar it spends delivering healthy food to elderly beneficiaries who have recently been discharged from the hospital. The savings would come from a reduction in the rate of readmissions to the hospital for patients suffering from a wide range of common ailments, including rheumatoid arthritis, congestive heart failure, diabetes and emphysema.

“If you were going to offer meals to every Medicare beneficiary, it would be cost-prohibitive,” said BPC’s Katherine Hayes. “By targeting it to a very, very sick group of people is how we were able to show there could be savings.”

Budget Deal Moving Ahead, Despite Outrage on the Right

A cyclist passes the U.S. Capitol in Washington
CHRIS WATTIE
By Michael Rainey

The bipartisan deal to suspend the debt ceiling and increase federal spending over the next two years will get a vote in the House on Thursday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said late Tuesday. Leaders in both parties have expressed confidence that the bill will pass before lawmakers leave town for their August recess.

"We're gonna pass it," Hoyer told reporters. "I think we'll get a good number [of votes]. I don't know if it's gonna be huge, but we're gonna pass it."

President Trump announced that he backs the deal, removing one possible hurdle for the bill. “Budget Deal gives great victories to our Military and Vets, keeps out Democrat poison pill riders. Republicans and Democrats in Congress need to act ASAP and support this deal,” he tweeted Tuesday evening.

Despite widespread agreement that the bill will pass, however, not everyone is on board.

Grumbles from the left: Some progressive Democrats have been critical of the deal, portraying it as too easy on Republicans. Worried that the agreement could set up a budget crisis in 2021, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said he was “concerned that it was a two-year deal. Why not a one year deal?... It seems like it’s basically handcuffing the next president.” Other liberals, noting that Democratic leaders have agreed to avoid “poison pill” riders on controversial issues such as abortion and funding for the border wall in the funding bills that must pass this fall, lamented their loss of leverage in those negotiations.

Outrage on the right: Resistance to the deal was more pronounced on the right, with the hardline House Freedom Caucus announcing Tuesday that it would not support the bill due to concerns about the growing national debt. “Our country is undeniably headed down a path of fiscal insolvency and rapidly approaching $23 trillion in debt. … All sides should go back to the drawing board and work around the clock, canceling recess if necessary, on a responsible budget agreement that serves American taxpayers better—not a $323 billion spending frenzy with no serious offsets,” the 31-member group said in a statement.

The deficit hawks at the Committee for Responsible Federal published “Five Reasons to Oppose the Budget Deal,” which include its purported $1.7 trillion cost over 10 years. CRFB noted that the agreement would increase discretionary spending by 21 percent during President Trump’s first term, pushing such spending to near-record levels.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) was more colorful in his criticism, saying, “You don’t have to be Euclid to understand the math here. We’re like Thelma and Louise in that car headed toward the cliff.” Nevertheless, Kennedy said he would consider supporting the deal.

Is the deficit hawk dead? The budget deal represents “the culmination of years of slipping fiscal discipline in Washington,” said Robert Costa and Mike DeBonis of The Washington Post, and it highlights the declining influence of fiscal conservatives in the capital, at least as far as policy is concerned. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said the Republican Party’s credibility on fiscal restraint is “long gone.”

Although it may be too early to declare the fiscal hawk extinct – plenty of critics say the bird will return as soon as there’s a Democratic president – it certainly seems to be in ill health. As the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato said Wednesday: “A battered bird has been named to the list of endangered species. The ‘deficit hawk’ is on the road to extinction. Rarely spotted around Washington, D.C., the deficit hawk’s last remaining habitat is found in some state capitals.”

Some Republicans said that fiscal conservatism was never really a core Republican value, dating back to President Reagan’s tax-cut-and-spend policies, and that Paul Ryan’s emphasis on fiscal issues was an aberration. “It was never the party of Paul Ryan,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the Post. “He’s a brilliant guy, but he filled a policy gap. The reality here is that Republicans were never going to get spending cuts with Speaker Pelosi running the House, and they didn’t want an economic meltdown or shutdown this summer.”

Is the whole debate missing the point? William Gale of the Brookings Institution, who served on President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, said he wasn’t sure why the budget deal was producing so much hostility, since it basically maintains the status quo and – more importantly – is focused solely on discretionary spending. “There *is* a long-term budget issue,” Gale tweeted Tuesday, “but cutting [discretionary spending] is not the way to go.”

Instead, Gale says that any serious fiscal plan must focus on the mandatory side of the ledger, where the rapidly increasing costs of health care and retirement are straining against revenues reduced by repeated rounds of tax cuts. Gale recommends a combination of entitlement reductions and revenue increases – a standard mix of policy options that faces an uncertain future, with well-entrenched interest groups standing opposed to movement in either direction.

N&V2

By The Fiscal Times Staff

Here's what we have our eye on today:

NEWS
  • Trump Wants a ‘Phase Two’ of Tax Cuts  – CNBC
  • Congress Has Until March 23 to Fund the Government. Three Ways This Could Go – Vox
  • The First Target on Drug Prices: Pharmacy Benefit Managers – Axios

News & Views

By The Fiscal Times Staff

Here's what we have our eye on today:

NEWS

VIEWS