{"id":43574,"date":"2017-09-11T05:37:44","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T05:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=43574"},"modified":"2017-09-11T05:37:44","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T05:37:44","slug":"trump-administration-ends-obama-era-plan-to-fortify-homes-in-flood-zones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/trump-administration-ends-obama-era-plan-to-fortify-homes-in-flood-zones.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration ends Obama-era plan to fortify homes in flood zones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump administration ends Obama-era plan to fortify homes in flood zones<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Trump administration ends Obama-era plan to fortify homes in flood zones:- The Trump administration has quietly killed off rules proposed under Barack Obama\u2019s presidency that would have required much tougher flood resiliency in thousands of new and rebuilt homes within flood zones, the Daily News has learned.<\/span><\/p>\n

The termination of the proposed rule \u201cwas terrible,\u201d said Dan Zarrilli, Mayor de Blasio\u2019s chief resilience officer and the official in charge of leading the city\u2019s post-Superstorm Sandy recovery.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, Zarrilli predicted, the thousands of homeowners deluged by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma will be allowed to rebuild in the same spots where they were flooded without any added resiliency.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow they will just follow local regulations,\u201d he said. \u201cIt just defaults to the lowest common denominator. The rebuilding is going to be built to lower standards because the feds aren\u2019t looking at addressing the effects of climate change.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Proposed after Sandy lashed New York and New Jersey in 2012, the Obama rule would have expanded the flood zones and required all newly constructed or \u201csubstantially improved\u201d one- to four-family homes financed by federally backed mortgages to be elevated or flood-proofed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development first proposed the rule in 2015, than began formally soliciting comments on it from interested parties last fall.<\/span><\/p>\n

In December, the Mortgage Brokers Association and several housing developer groups asked Obama\u2019s HUD to rescind the rule, claiming that uncertainties about the flood plain map made estimating costs of the required resiliency difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ali Ahmad, spokesman for brokers group, wrote in an email to The News, \u201cInstituting the new rule without the maps would have added an element of uncertainty into the lending decision, uncertainty that lenders would have been forced to price into their loans.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ahmad said that could make the cost of building new or rehabbing existing affordable housing \u201cprohibitive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt a time when this country is facing a shortage of affordable housing, increasing the cost of lending and construction would have exacerbated the problem, not helped solve it,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The brokers association also argued that new homes already under construction or undergoing \u201csubstantial rehabilitation\u201d should be exempted from the rule because the rules were over-burdensome and would add costs that \u201cmay negatively sway\u201d homeowners from seeking HUD financing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The proposed rules remained under active review when the Obama team was replaced by Trump appointees in January, and the mortgage broker representatives and builders repeated their objections.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the second week of August, the mortgage executives and builders met with HUD officials in Washington, D.C. They were greeted by HUD\u2019s newly appointed General Deputy Assistant Secretary for Housing Dana Wade, who made a point of telling them she had started her job a week earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prior to arriving at HUD, Wade was a senior fellow at the Charles Koch Institute, a right-leaning nonprofit run by Charles Koch. Koch and his brother David are wealthy energy moguls who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting to kill government regulation of business.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a Koch Institute fellow, Wade has advocated cutting multiple regulations, including dramatically watering down the Dodd-Frank Act enacted to tighten financial regulations after the housing market collapsed in 2007 and 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n

After Wade left, other HUD officials told the mortgage broker executives that they would soon publicly announce that the proposed tougher flood risk management requirements for homes were dead.<\/span><\/p>\n

About a week later on Aug. 15, Trump announced his sweeping infrastructure executive order, including this statement without explanation: \u201cExecutive Order 13690 of January 30, 2015 (Establishing a Federal Flood Risk Management Standard and a Process for Further Soliciting and Considering Stakeholder Input) is revoked.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Coverage of Trump\u2019s order focused on revocation of flood risk management rules for infrastructure such as bridges and roads. Officials did not mention the rules for homes had also been revoked.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rules were proposed by the Obama administration to address climate change and strengthen future responses to floods. They were issued in response to the incredible damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zarrilli, who runs the city\u2019s multiagency response to Sandy, said the Trump administration \u201cwithdrew really common sense regulation for homeowners.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal government is sticking its head in the sand on the reality of climate change,\u201d Zarrilli said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/politics\/trump-ends-obama-era-plan-fortify-homes-flood-zones-article-1.3485660<\/span><\/p>\n

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