Fires and natural disasters in California and the Southeast have made it hard to get homeowners’ insurance which has led people to think about how to provide it. Homeowners’ insurance has outpriced many. But providing insurance can lead people to stay put in unsustainable places. We can do better than that.
Don’t ask economists what to do! Some think people should just suck it up – even if they can’t. Some think we should protect everybody – even if they could afford insurance! The only goal built into economics is more but that’s where their agreement ends and where the big issues start. More of what? Economists even have technical terms for liberal and conservative versions of their goals. Their nostrums can increase income inequality and make plutocrats from Trump to Zuckerberg happy, though it would outrage many of us. Other economists would spread the wealth and infuriate those who despise helping the poor and disadvantaged.
But what we should do is use the cost of insurance as a way to move people out of danger zones and into housing that will cause less damage to the environment.
Everybody – government, insurance companies, property owners – could help make progress happen. And changes to the tax system could encourage it. But it probably won’t be politically feasible without a lot of compromise.
Protecting people doesn’t mean protecting their so-called “right” to live in unsustainable locations or subsidizing mansions in places that will cost the public a lot to protect.
Government should take responsibility for making sure people have food and shelter, whether the problem comes from natural or economic disasters. During the Great Depression, from 1929 through the 30s, we treated food and shelter as a part of providing jobs. Now we have people going “home” from their jobs to sleep in their cars. And we get angry that people, who have no place to go, go nowhere – to streets, sidewalks, stoops, and parks. What are we thinking? That they should go up in flames because they can’t earn enough for rent? I think those displaced by fires, other natural disasters or by the failure of the job market all deserve support and government should provide it. The ways America mistreats the unhoused and the unfed are shameful.
More, every community should provide food and shelter for those in need. And it should be a shared responsibility. We’ve divided ourselves into legally separate communities for the convenience of those who think of themselves as too high class to be concerned about the permanently and temporarily poor. In effect, our laws about forming legal boundaries have allowed and assisted the resegregation of America. That was supposed to end in 1954 and, except for states that were once segregated by law, it has gotten worse. Welcome wagons, food pantries and other ways of providing food to the hungry have become volunteer and local efforts. That leaves some communities without resources and others without responsibility.
But we absolutely should also move people out of the way of natural disasters. Spending a lot of money just to recreate current problems isn’t smart. We can do a lot better.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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