I read a bit once about what happened in many areas of Florida. Because of frequent hurricanes, the insurance industry began to refuse to insure homes in some areas. This put a damper on real estate development, as you can imagine. So the real estate industry got their lobbyists working overtime to convince the state government to underwrite the insurance in those areas. I have no idea if this is still going on or exactly what form the underwriting took place. Did they subsidize the insurance companies, did they provide insurance directly to the home owners (something I doubt since it sounds way too socialist for Florida), etc. Maybe another reader knows more about this. I believe that column (or essay) also criticized the industry for failing to build "hurricane-resistant" dwellings. Basically, the real estate and insurance industries offloaded the cost of hurricane damage onto the state government, something you would not expect in a place that values the "free market" that wants the government to "get off their backs", you know, by collecting taxes to pay for these periodic disaster recoveries.
So no one wanted to address the real issue, dealing with hurricanes. Each entity wanted something, build houses, get elected, buy cheap(er) housing. But when hurricanes demolish an area, it's taxpayer money that comes to the rescue. I'm not saying it shouldn't, but the question remains whether it could have been done better. One solution is a strong local government that sets building standards and zoning and sticks to those standards. (Please stop laughing.)
Here in eastern Ontario (Canada) we had major flooding this past spring. Aside from old housing stock that existed on flood plains, there were also relatively newer homes that were flooded. They were built in places that should never have been permitted. The floods we had were not unprecedented, as the area had a similar one about 40 years ago. That is within a lifetime and there were plenty of people around who remembered that earlier flood. Yet the various municipalities allowed houses to be constructed in places they knew to be flood plains. I watched footage of a newer home with 2 feet of water in its ground floor dining room in an area I drive past quite often, on a spit of land jutting out into the Ottawa River. Who do you blame? The office that issued the building permit or zoned the area for residential housing, the developer, the home owner, the housing inspector that the owner hired prior to sale, etc? I don't know. But I know who paid, the owner, the insurance company (ies), and the taxpayer. The developers and officials who allowed these dwellings to be built were all at home watching TV.
I'm willing to bet that there were probably people who did lobby for those building permits not to be issued, but it's not difficult to imagine how they were ignored at the town council meetings, dismissed as the usual troublemakers and whiners. And I would have no problem with this construction if the participants had to sign a binding waiver that stated that any clean-up would be at their own expense. Does anyone think that will happen?