Business/Economic News for 18 Feb 10

Florida Keys Homeowners Figthing FEMA Are Tilting At Windmills In A Hurricane

In this morning's Key West Citizen Online, there is an article titled "Mayor: FEMA Resolution A No-Go". In this, we read Mayor Sylvia Murphy of Monroe County (which is the county all of the Florida Keys is part of) is against writing a resolution with county commissioners to ask FEMA to stop their call for the deconstruction of illegal downstairs dwellings under stilt homes, once FEMA has inspected them.

Murphy's view is different than ex-Mayor Mario DiGennaro's. The Ex-Mayor doesn't seem to understand that his view is like a person at the roulette wheel betting it all on red or black. As Murphy was quoted saying in the article:

"I'm not willing to poke my finger into [FEMA's] business,"she said. "They will pull us out of the federal flood insurance program. We agree their [mandate] isn't fair because they aren't doing it on Long Island, but fair has nothing to do with it. You can't deal with a bully."

For those of you who were not down here after our most recent devastating hurricane, Hurricane Katrina of 2005, it was FEMA which swooped in with trailers for hundreds of homeowners whose ground level living spaces were flooded by a surge. The surge happened after the winds had died down, the skies started clearing, and everybody was just beginning to breathe a sigh of relief for another bullet dodged. At the time of Katrina, I was living on the second floor of an old building built with Dade County pine. I felt safe during the Category 2 winds, and once the winds subsided, I walked out of my house, went over two streets, and watched surge waters completely submerge automobiles (including numerous KW Police cars), uproot trees, outdoor washing machines, ice machines and the like, and washing them down dozens of New Town streets where the houses were taking on 3 to 4 feet of water.

Up on Big Coppitt Key my old rental house (which I passed on buying during the Housing Bubble because it was way overpriced and not on stilts) took on 6 to 7 feet of water. The houses immediately next to Big Coppitt rental home were condemned and scheduled for bulldozing. The buyers of my old rental house lived one year in peace and harmony before Katrina's flood surge struck. And then they lived in a FEMA trailer for almost a year while their sub-contractors ripped out moldy sheet rock, fixed the electrical and plumbing fixtures destroyed by salt water, and basically made the place as habitable as possible ready for the next storm surge. Like all other groundfloor homes which flooded during Katrina, this home was restored as best possible with one minor discrepancy: it was never placed up on stilts.


Why Should The Federal Government Continue To Pick Up The Tab For The Folly Of Unwise Homeowners?

Getting back to the current article in the Key West Citizen Online we read:

The county began inspections in 2002 after FEMA threatened to kick Monroe County out of the National Flood Insurance Program. Di Gennaro says many residents bought homes not knowing that enclosures were illegal.

Murphy said FEMA wants homes brought into compliance to minimize clean-up costs after a storm.

"The Monroe County bill after [Hurricane] Wilma was $30 million. We paid it out and FEMA pays back a large percentage -- 75 percent or so," she said.

Make no mistake, U.S. taxpayers who live in the mountains of North Carolina, who hunker down in the barrios of East L.A. and who reside as desert dwellers in New Mexico help subsidize the relief work of FEMA providing temporary shelter to Keys homeowners whose groundfloor dwellings are wiped out in floods. The taxpayers in the other 49 states also subsidize crybaby homeowners in the Keys with the federal flood insurance program which these mental geldings in the Keys are going to lose by fighting FEMA.

I saw it first hand in Key West: right after Katrina the homeowners of New Town Key West built mountains of destroyed carpet, refrigerators, stereos, flat panel HDTVs, artwork, lamps, etc., in front of their homes. These monuments to these homeowners folly of living so close to the ocean and at such low sea level remained behind for weeks as more FEMA trailers appeared here, there and everywhere. Waste Disposal worked as fast as it could to remove the demolished appliances and other belongings.

This same scene was true with illegal downstairs' dwellings built in stilt homes in the Lower and Middle Keys with damage from Katrina's storm surge.

So this begs the question: Why would any sane homeowner or potential homebuyer want to invest money fighting FEMA in their request to remove illegal dwellings under stilt homes? Do they want FEMA, i.e. the U.S. taxpayers, to continue to pick up their tab for being greedy ignoramuses who want to live so close to the ocean?

If FEMA had not bailed out these so called adults with short attention memory spans who do not read History, who would have?

And now these adult children want FEMA to continue holding their hands, wiping their butts, and putting on their diapers simply because they want to keep their cribs almost on sea level, where, by the way, sea levels are rising faster than in any time in the past 2,000 years?

I call out taxpaying homeowners and future homebuyers of the Florida Keys on this wanting to keep their ground level dwellings while expecting no increase in insurance premiums. And demanding that federal taxpayers from the other 49 states continue to pay for your addiction to a waterview is a Socialist Oligarch's viewpoint and nothing more. If you own a groundfloor dwelling in the lower Keys, quit your crying and quit sucking on the Federal Government's teat when Mother Nature comes roaring ashore yet again to remind you how immature and stupid you truly are.


p.s. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein

Phase 2 of Housing Bubble Crash Has Begun

Worth a look again:



Part I



Part II