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Today, the House Financial Services Committee is holding a Housing and Insurance Subcommittee hearing, led by Subcommittee Chair Mike Flood (NE-01), to investigate ways to lower the costs and damage of flooding.

Read Subcommittee Chairman Flood’s opening remarks as prepared for delivery:

"I’d like to thank our witnesses for being with us today, and I very much look forward to an important discussion focused on the National Flood Insurance Program, with special emphasis on mitigation efforts and multiple loss properties.

"The National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP, was established in 1968 in response to repeated flood disasters that resulted in the need for federal disaster relief. At the time, Congress felt the NFIP could make flood insurance coverage more widely available at reasonable terms for those who needed it.

"Flood damage is a unique kind of peril. It is not covered by homeowners insurance the way wind, hail or other damage would be. Instead, the National Flood Insurance Program is the primary source of flood insurance coverage for residential properties across the country.

"The NFIP is managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It’s primarily funded through premiums from policyholders, but premiums charged by the program often do not fully reflect real flood risk.

"When premiums from the National Flood Insurance Fund are insufficient to pay claims, the program has authority to borrow from the Treasury.

"For most of its history, the NFIP borrowed relatively little from the Treasury. However, after a very destructive hurricane season in 2005, Congress increased the borrowing limit for the program to roughly $20 billion to pay claims. Then, after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Congress increased the borrowing limit for the program again to $30.425 billion. 

"The NFIP has continued to accrue debt in the years that have followed. Most recently, the program borrowed $2 billion in additional funds in February 2025, bringing the program’s current debt to $22.525 billion. That leaves just $7.9 billion more in borrowing authority before the program hits its borrowing cap.

"In order to appreciate what is driving the increasing debt for this program, we need to better understand what is driving the risk within the flood insurance program.

"During this hearing, we have witnesses prepared to speak on two important factors that affect the program’s financial health: multiple loss properties and mitigation.

"Multiple loss properties are properties that flood repeatedly, often costing the NFIP and taxpayers significant money. According to the GAO, as of 2021 unmitigated multiple loss properties made up about 2.5 percent of NFIP policies, but 48 percent of NFIP claims.

"We can find some public reporting that tells the story of these properties that repeatedly flood. For example, the Washington Post reported in 2024 that one property in Virginia Beach has flooded an astounding 52 times, including four floods in 2020 and two in 2021. That property received payments totaling around $784,967 from the program.

"I’d like to submit that article into the record.

"The mismatch between the number of these repetitive loss properties covered by the NFIP and the amount of claims paid out to those homes demonstrates a significant structural challenge for the program.

"While multiple loss properties constitute a significant driver of flood insurance claims, mitigation is a potential means of limiting flood damages across the country.

"Methods of mitigation can vary, but in general there are four main strategies for mitigating risk:

1. Acquisition, where a state or local government purchases flooded structures and demolishes them;

2. Elevation, where a structure is raised higher to bring the property above the flood plain;

3. Relocation, where local governments purchase land to help relocate the structure; and

4. Floodproofing, where renovations are made to reduce future flood damage.

"All of these mitigation tactics can be used to limit flood losses in areas that are otherwise prone to flooding. Any conversation about the future of the National Flood Insurance Program will naturally feature some differences of opinion based upon regional divides, but that’s okay. 

"Whether you are from an area that floods frequently or an area that floods rarely, I feel that we all have a unified set of goals that are intertwined: We need to abate the flood risk. High flooding risk means more damages for homeowners and more claims and debt is added to the already severely indebted NFIP. I hope our witnesses can help us chart a path forward towards those goals.

"Before I yield back, I’d like to submit a couple letters into the record:

• NAMIC
• APCIA

"I yield back."

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