New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced a $400 million plan to purchase and demolish homes destroyed by Hurricane Sandy and preserve the land permanently as undeveloped coastline. The scale of the proposal is large, as 10,000 homes in the 100-year floodplain were seriously damaged by Sandy. Some property owners have already expressed interest in relocating, including a majority of the households in the Fox Beach section of Oakwood Beach in Staten Island.1
The concept behind government programs to purchase storm-damaged properties is not new. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has long been involved in the purchase of homes in disaster areas. Following large-scale flooding in the Midwest in 1993, Congress amended the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act) to authorize FEMA to acquire flood-prone property.2
