January 6, 2026
Floods, facts & fury
New maps reveal post-flood migration patterns across the US
Flood maps, FEMA fights and “propaganda?” Internet erupts over who should pay to move out of disaster zones
TLDR: New maps show many flood-hit homeowners move away, but most don’t use FEMA’s buyout program and instead sell risky homes to someone else. Commenters explode over whether the article is quiet government propaganda, calling out fuzzy math and asking who’s really getting protected — families or federal budgets.
New maps showing how Americans move after their homes flood were supposed to be about science and safety… but online, the real storm is in the comments. The article explains that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) buys out some flooded homes, tears them down, and turns the land into parks or open space so people aren’t repeatedly rebuilding in disaster zones. Sounds reasonable, right? Not to this crowd.
One user immediately slams the piece as “propaganda,” turning a dry policy story into a trust-the-government vs. question-everything brawl. Another commenter goes full fact-checker mode, accusing the authors of quietly inflating their claims by using a big, general disaster-savings number and making it sound like a proven FEMA buyout miracle. That sparks a mini-nerd war over whether the program is a life-saving bargain or a glossy sales pitch.
Others poke at the logic of the maps themselves: if 14 out of 15 people move without a FEMA buyout, doesn’t that just mean new unsuspecting families are walking right into future floods? Cue the horror movie jokes about “haunted houses, but with water damage.” There’s even a side-quest argument over whether FEMA should also be buying out wildfire homes. In the end, the data is interesting — but the comment section turns it into a chaotic town hall on climate, government math, and who gets left holding the soggy mortgage.
Key Points
- •Rice researchers mapped post-flood relocations linked to FEMA buyout areas nationwide using address-level data from 2007–2017 across 550+ counties.
- •Most residents who move from buyout areas stay local, but many transfer risky properties to new occupants instead of accepting buyouts.
- •FEMA’s buyout program has invested nearly $4 billion to purchase and demolish about 45,000 flood-prone homes, largely since 2001.
- •Cited research indicates the program avoids an estimated $4–$6 in future disaster costs for every $1 invested; homeowners receive predisaster prices minus flood insurance payouts.
- •The program faces jeopardy amid staffing/funding cuts and talk of dismantling FEMA; 42 Hazard Mitigation Grant Program applications from March–September were denied or pending as of mid-September.