A nationwide study shows that about half of the homeowners who live in federally designated flood plains do not have flood insurance.However, according to the Rand Corporation, the South - including the Gulf Coast area - has a higher percentage of insured, single-family homeowners than elsewhere across the country.
Rand surveyed 100 nationwide communities and 750 properties in each community. “There hasn’t been very reliable information about the percentage of homeowners who have flood insurance, and that has big implications for what uninsured losses are like during an event,” said RAND researcher Lloyd Dixon, who wrote the highly technical report.
Overall, between 50 percent and 52 percent of people who own single-family homes in flood plains carry such insurance, the study concluded. But it found that a quarter of homeowners whose federally backed mortgages require them to be insured against floods actually are not, and Dixon noted that compliance “is not perfectly enforced.”
About 60 percent of homeowners in the South and West have flood insurance, compared with 20 percent to 30 percent in the Midwest and Northeast. Dixon said that gap likely reflects the few massive floods in those regions despite the widespread damage caused by the 1993 Midwest floods and a 1938 hurricane that killed 700 New Yorkers and New Englanders and left 63,000 homeless.
As expected, according to the report, homeowners in coastal areas are more likely to have flood insurance than inland areas. Additionally, people in smaller communities are less likely to be insured – possibly in part because “there may be less appreciation of risk when there’s just a small number of homes affected,” Dixon said.
Further, 62 percent of homeowners who have suffered flooding within a five-year period are insured. However, the rate dropped to 31 percent in communities that are only flooded once every 10 years.
The RAND report did not examine insurance rates specifically in Louisiana or Mississippi.