[stevenwoo]

For most who do not own a home near a shore or in a flood plain, the answer is obvious, and the game reinforces this (it only allows this as a long term success) - do not attempt to change the advance of rising sea levels at sandy beaches and buy back the threatened homes for a managed retreat, every other option essentially is short term stop gap solution for the threatened home owners.

[ruytlm]

To play devil's advocate a little, why should those homes be bought back?

[eloisant]

Because it's the job of the country/state to decide what land are safe to be built on.

If building too close to the shore was a bad idea, and it was known at the time, the zoning should have forbid it to start with.

These people are not personally responsible for the raise of the sea level, it makes sense to have the risk taken away from them.

[lettergram]

> Because it's the job of the country/state to decide what land are safe to be built on.

Not everyone agrees with you. Personally, I don’t think it’s up to the government to tell you where you can / can’t live on land you purchase. However, inspections should and do occur informing you of risks.

Zoning has to do with a variety of factors, but I doubt for most of U.S. history it had to do with “will this coast erode in 100 years” From my limited understanding it has more to do with what CAN be built, not what SHOULD. Basically, “this can be commercial real estate because we need revenue/jobs” vs “this can be residential because we need people”

[hrktb]

> Personally, I don’t think it’s up to the government to tell you where you can / can’t live on land you purchase.

I respect your opinion, but isn’t it the very purpose of zoning to define what can and cannot be done on that purchased land ?

And it’s already used for protection of habitations, for instance not allowing houses in industrial areas. For high risk areas, this all issue could have been avoided by refusing building permits as well, but blanket deciding a whole area can’t be used for living is the easiest course of action IMO.

[stevenwoo]

I think we see the reasoning a bit in the current flood insurance program in the United States, the federal backup insurance plan has become the sole insurance plan for a lot of homes built in areas where there were flood plains in the past or are now in flood plains due to climate change or our past definition of 100 year flood plain (used for pooling into requiring flood insurance) was not a good measure. The home owners do not want to move and will not accept a buyout at a realistic price, and we get homes in flood plains getting rebuilt 10 and even 20 times. https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-house-22-floods-repeated-cl...

[olliej]

they shouldn't be. But then I believe Texas ruled that requiring realtor/home-sellers to report that a property was on a known flood-plain was the government "taking property" (because requiring realtor to say the house will flood decreases sale value) and therefore illegal.