Hurricanes went into a thirty-year hiatus and special interests (read: realtors, banksters, and government entities profiting from property taxes) got the federal government to insure property along the coast and in flood plains for a fraction of the eventual cost. You might remember that $9 billion of the $61-billion Sandy relief funding was to replenish the exhausted insurance fund. Attempts to regulate building in these areas was ruled by the Supreme Court as "a taking" so had to be compensated by the regulating authority. The gold rush was on.
Seems the storm hiatus is over and storms are back. In the 1993 flood of the Mississippi flood plain, the insuring authority paid for the homes destroyed, but said they would not insure any replacement housing built in the same location, unless elevated. One town moved its entire population to higher ground. These folks were rural middle-class citizens, so the insuring authority has greater leverage. On the coasts, the recipients are more often rich and influential, so the insuring authority less often dictates.
Of course, the reason often heard for new restrictions is that the ocean level is rising because of global warming. The ocean is rising, but the rate is 2.5 millimeters per year, probably from warming coming out of the Little Ice Age.. However, there seems no shortage of stories that speculate "if the oceans rise 3 feet..."
