[junkcollector]

When a proper developer builds a home or sub-division in Houston, they bring in fill dirt and do compactions until the houses rest on small hills. You get frequent flooding (about once a year) but it rarely reaches the house before the flood prevention systems have a chance to divert and control it. The problem here is two-fold, as discussed in the article, these people built there homes INSIDE the flood diversion systems and never did due diligence on their home purchase to find out that they were in homes literally designed to be flooded and unscrupulous developers who improperly built or ignored the creation of new flood control when up-building developments that made previously safe areas at risk like the HP plant that flooded. Of course this implies that the city code/design/inspectors/etc. were not doing their jobs as well.

[pyre]

As others were saying, the developers actively wanted to exclude disclosure the flood status of these plots to potential buyers. Eventually the city "compromised" with them to hide a one-sentence warning deep in the paperwork.

Now granted, this did not prevent the homeowners from doing their own due-diligence, but I really think that the city officials that agreed to this, and the developers that lobbied for it should all be taken to task for their actions (and I think this regardless of what happened during the hurricane).