NRDCīut the rest of those 3,000 or so properties remain unfixed. The total number of properties, both insured and uninsured, continues to grow faster that the number of properties where the flooding has been addressed. Miami Herald This chart shows the number of severe repetitive loss properties in Florida over time. That’s what North Miami did with one of its repetitive loss properties in 2019, which is now a mini park designed to absorb the neighborhood’s floodwater on rainy days. Of the 3,100, only a hundred have been fixed in the last few decades, either by elevating the house high enough that it doesn’t flood, or buying the property, razing the house and turning the empty lot into a grassy lot that absorbs water. That number could soar in next year’s data as the city counted more than 1,100 homes flooded after the “rain bomb.” Many residents in neighborhoods like River Oaks reported that it wasn’t the first time they’d had damage.Īccording to the NRDC analysis of FEMA’s data, the vast majority of the state’s problem properties remain highly vulnerable. FEMA shows only 23 insured homes in the city that have experienced repeated flooding. Weber said that some of the Florida list have flooded more than 9 times in the last decade alone.īecause the FEMA numbers run only through the end of 2022, they don’t show repetitive loss figures from the historic rainfall that drowned some low-lying Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods last April. Two new bills filed this year could address it, but previous attempts to solve the problem in Tallahassee have failed. Florida added about 120 of those homes from 2021 to 2022.īut Floridians don’t get to know where, exactly, these homes are, due to federal and state laws that block renters or home buyers from learning about past flooding on private properties.

There are about 45,000 of these properties in the U.S., as of the end of 2022, with about 3,100 in Florida alone, according to FEMA data analyzed by the NRDC. Miami Herald From left, Santiago Rojas, 15, Denis Mendez, 32, and Isain Lopez, 33, leave their flooded home in the Fort Lauderdale’s Edgewood neighborhood after a torrential downpour severely flooded streets, partially submerging houses and cars across South Florida. The FEMA data in question, released by the NRCD on Tuesday, is just part of the flood damage picture, showing only what the federal government declares as a “severe repetitive loss property.” That designation covers homes that have flooded twice, with damage totaling the value of the property, or flooded four times with at least $5,000 of damage each time. “These are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to repeatedly flooded properties in the US,” said Anna Weber, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which analyzed the FEMA data. Plenty of homeowners are not required to hold flood insurance policies or use a private company that doesn’t report claims data.

And those FEMA numbers are almost assuredly an undercount of flood-prone properties because the agency’s data reflects only insured properties that filed flood claims with the National Flood Insurance Program. Here’s the kicker: Potential buyers and renters are prohibited from knowing that flooding history under federal and state rules. It’s a number that is growing across the state, in part because in the vast majority of cases, little has been done to protect the properties from future floods. Thousands of homes across the state have endured water damage more than once. Newly released data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency puts some hard numbers to a problem that climate change promises to make worse in the coming decades. But an exact count of flood-prone homes in South Florida - and where and how often they flood - has been all but impossible to pin down. Between “rain bombs” and drenching from no-name storms, hundreds of homes in South Florida have experienced damaging flooding in the last year alone.

Fema flood zone address