MOSBY, Mo. (AP) The residents of this small riverside town have become accustomed to watching floods swamp their streets, transform their homes into islands and ruin their floors and furniture.
Elmer Sullivan has replaced his couch, bed and television. Hes torn up water-buckled floorboards. And he put a picket fence against the front of his house to cover up a gap left when waters washed out part of the stone foundation.
I just dont want to mess with it anymore. Im 83 years old and Im tired of it, and I just want to get out of it, Sullivan said.
Finally fed up, Sullivan and nearly half of the homeowners in Mosby signed up in 2016 for a program in which the government would buy and then demolish their properties rather than paying to rebuild them over and over. Theyre still waiting for offers, joining thousands of others across the country in a slow-moving line to escape from flood-prone homes.
Patience is wearing thin in Mosby, a town of fewer than 200 people with a core of lifelong residents and some younger newcomers drawn by the cheap prices of its modest wood-frame homes. Residents watched nervously this past week as high waters again threatened the town.
It really is frustrating, because here we are, were coming through a wet season. Theres a chance that we could possibly flood, and were still waiting, said Jason Stooksbury, an alderman who oversees the towns efforts to curb flooding. Its not a good situation, but what are you going to do its the government process.
Over the past three decades, federal and local governments have poured more than $5 billion into buying tens of thousands of vulnerable properties across the country, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The AP analysis shows those buyouts have been getting more expensive, with many of the costliest coming in the last decade after strong storms pounded heavily populated coastal states such as Texas, New York and New Jersey. This years record flooding in the Midwest could add even more buyouts to the queue.
The purchases are happening as the climate changes. Along rivers and sea coasts, some homes that were once considered at little risk are now endangered due to water that is climbing higher and surging farther inland than historic patterns predicted.
Regardless of the risks, the buyouts are voluntary. Homeowners can renew taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance policies indefinitely.
With more extreme weather events, flooding is going to become more and more of an issue, and there will be more and more properties that are at risk of total loss or near total loss, said Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over FEMA. Then the question is: Are we just going to keep selling them insurance and building in the same place?
DeFazio wants to expand and revamp a buyout process that he describes as inefficient and irrational. Hes backing a proposed pilot project that would give homeowners a break on their flood insurance premiums, as long as they agree in advance to a buyout that would turn their property into green space if their homes are substantially damaged by a flood.
Buyout programs rely on federal money distributed through the states, but they generally are carried out by cities and counties that end up owning the properties.
Most buyouts are initiated after disasters, but Congress has become more proactive. Appropriations for FEMAs Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program which funds buyouts and other precautions, such as elevating homes before disasters strike have risen from $25 million in 2015 to $250 million this year.
A recent study for the National Institute of Building Sciences found that society as a whole saves $7 in avoided costs for every $1 spent through federally funded grants to acquire or demolish flood-prone buildings. Yet its harder to gauge the benefits for the individuals who move.
