Kennedy questions Tisler about FEMA high flood insurance in Banking
Kennedy: Mr. Tisler, do you think the federal government should be making it more expensive to build affordable housing?
Tisler: Absolutely not, sir.
Kennedy: Um, well it is… The mortgagee, or the person who loans the money, oftentimes requires that the homeowner carry insurance. Can we agree on that?
Tisler: Yes, sir.
Kennedy: And more and more, uh, the mortgagee, the person loaning the money, requires the homeowner to carry flood insurance. Yet, while you are here advocating, as we all are, for affordable housing, our federal government, through FEMA, is uh, is working as hard as it can to increase the cost of flood insurance. Uh, FEMA hired a company called Milliman to write a new algorithm, which Milliman says can look at every individual home in the United States and predict its flood risk over the next 30 years. Amazing! There’s this one problem; they won’t share with anyone the algorithm. And as a result of that algorithm, uh, national flood insurance costs have gone- I’ll give you the national figure- from 808 bucks to 1,808 dollars. Now, I’ll give you some concrete examples in my state. We call counties parishes. Saint Mary Parish, the median household income is 40,000, roughly. The new flood insurance rate in Saint Mary Parish is 5226 dollars a year. As a result of FEMA’s actions, they’ve done include homeowners. That didn’t include property taxes. That doesn’t include liability insurance. That’s flood. Now, how can you build an affordable home for someone when they have to pay half of the cost of the home when you add up all this insurance they have to carry?
Tisler: Uh, Senator, I can’t speak to FEMA because I don’t know how they arrived at that,
Kennedy: yes. But I guess that was an unfair question. Why aren’t the three of you… I’m not criticizing you, you know, I’m making this a gentle suggestion. Why don’t you take a look at what FEMA’s doing to the cost of building an affordable home in America? Because you’re not going to have any. There’s no… There’s no free lunch and you don’t get one now. I mean, they’re making it impossible to build affordable housing in America. And I think the three of you, respectfully, ought to take a look at that and the impact on affordable housing in our country.
Kennedy questions Yentel about zoning in Banking
Kennedy: Ms. Yentel, did I say your name right?
Yentel: It’s Yentel.
Kennedy: I’m sorry. Uh, you talked about zoning. Let’s take California, for example. I don’t mean to pick on California. I love California. It’s a beautiful state. It’s very expensive to own a home there. Can we agree on that, Yentel: yes
Kennedy: So people, when they buy a home, working people, poor and middle class – not many poor people can afford to buy a home – it costs so much that their home becomes their 401k. They can’t save anything. I mean, they have to put the money into equity in their home. And so they want to protect the value of that home and they communicate that to their elected officials. So their elected officials, despite what they say, make it very difficult, through their zoning decisions, to build affordable housing. Despite their left-of-center politics, isn’t that what’s going on?
Kennedy: That’s absolutely true, and California is a prime example of what happens when very restrictive local zoning ordinances prevent the construction of any type of housing, multi-family housing, and especially affordable housing. And the result is that it drives up costs for everyone, and it certainly squeezes the lowest-income renters the most. But California is not alone. This is a pattern. No, but it’s the best example, isn’t it?
Yentel: It is a prime example, yes.
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Kennedy: affordable housing? FEMA expensive flood insurance, California Dem officials zoning not affordable