13 Investigators Find More Houston-Area Homes Are Flooding Repeatedly

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Stephen and Ellen Leventhal said their street looked like a river in 2017 after Hurricane Harvey dumped 1 trillion gallons of water in Harris County.

And when they entered their home for the first time after the evacuation, they said it looked unrecognizable.

“We had been putting things on our dining room table thinking, ‘Oh, okay, we’re going to go ahead and save these things,’ but it caused the table to fall in the middle,” Ellen Leventhal said. “But the worst part was it was our anniversary and we were thinking of putting our wedding album up high and it was pretty high up, but we lost everything. There wasn’t a single photo left. You couldn’t even walk in the house . You had to crawl over things.

Harvey wasn’t the first time the couple experienced flooding in their Meyerland-area home. Water also seeped inside during the 2016 Tax Day floods and the 2015 Memorial Day floods.

“We had FEMA’s number on speed dial,” she said.

13 Investigations revealed that the Leventhals were not the only ones seeking help from insurance or government aid programs after the floods.

According to federal data, about 45,000 homes in the United States have been flooded repeatedly. About 5,260 of those homes are in Harris County.

Repeated flooding affects people even if they don’t live in a flood-prone area, because many of these at-risk homes are rebuilt repeatedly thanks to taxpayer-backed FEMA flood insurance. said Anna Weber, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. .

“The National Flood Insurance Program, which supports the vast majority of flood insurance policies in this country, is ultimately supported by the taxpayer. It is your tax dollars that go to rebuild homes that were repeatedly flooded,” Weber said.

Harris County is particularly a hot spot for severe repetitive loss properties, or SRLPs, according to NRDC’s analysis of FEMA data.

As hurricane season begins Saturday, only 23% of the 5,259 severe repetitive loss properties in Harris County have been mitigated, meaning less than a quarter of these at-risk homes have been modified to protect against future floods.

“Many people in the Houston area and across the country are trapped in this cycle of repetitive flooding, rebuilding, and then it happens again. And it’s going to continue to happen unless we make changes to make it easier mitigating that flood risk for people to access and less expensive,” Weber said.

Weber said part of the problem is that homeowners need to build better after flooding, but that can mean paying out of pocket for mitigation measures.

“Like any other form of insurance, the goal of the (flood) insurance program is to get you back to where you were before the damage occurred,” she said. “If you have a car with car insurance and a tree falls on your car, your car insurance is going to pay to put you back in a car that was very similar to the one you had before – repair your car to where you were before “It’s not intended to go beyond that and bring you to a less risky situation than before and the same is true with flooding.”

In a statement, FEMA told 13 Investigates it will “distribute up to $800 million in flood mitigation assistance grants to help reduce or eliminate the risk of repeated flood damage Buildings and Structures” during the current funding cycle.

In the 77096 ZIP code where the Leventhals live, about 360 homes experienced repeated flooding, according to NRDC’s analysis of FEMA data.

Despite the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, Stephen Leventhal said the couple had already lost most of their belongings during the 2015 Memorial Day floods.

At that time, he said they decided not to rebuild because they didn’t expect to experience this type of flooding for a while and wanted to sell the house for land.

“One of the reasons we knew we could never live here without mitigating the damage was because every time it was going to rain, you would be panicked that we were going to have another flood,” Stephen said.

But after three straight years of flooding, the Leventhals decided to demolish their entire home and rebuild a house with a living space raised six feet above street level.

The couple said they had to pay out of pocket for almost all of the rebuilding work, but it was worth it given the peace of mind they now have when it rains.

“There was no way we, and maybe especially me, were living in a house in Meyerland that wasn’t elevated,” Ellen Leventhal said. “A lot of people didn’t make that choice and they’re okay. I knew I wasn’t going to be okay.”

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