Give the state of Alabama credit for being the first to do something about a serious problem. Their program of paying coastal property owners to put stronger roofs on their homes in an attempt to prevent damage from hurricanes appears to be working.
Alabama's action, which began in 2016, was a response to the twin threats of stronger hurricanes and rising insurance premiums.
"The gamble paid off four years later, when a Category 2 hurricane slammed into the state," The Washington Post reported. "By then, thousands of Alabama residents had installed roofs designed specifically to survive high winds, known as fortified roofs. After the storm, the state found almost all of these homes escaped with only minor damage."
Other states susceptible to natural disasters have noticed. Mississippi and Louisiana have copied Alabama's roof program, as have South Carolina, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Kentucky. And as home insurance companies reduce their risk in areas that are prone to wildfires, a number of Western states are considering similar incentives to help their residents harden their homes.
It's an interesting trend, partly because many elected leaders in these states are skeptical of climate change. But they obviously understand the economics of the weather problem — especially when it compels insurers to quit doing business in high-risk areas.
The fortified roofs have been developed by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a research group funded by insurance companies that wanted to "break the cycle of damage, rebuild and repeat for homeowners," as one of the organization's managers put it.
The roofs use building techniques and materials that IBHS has tested in its wind tunnel, and are also based on the results of several major hurricanes. It works: Along with Alabama's 2020 example, in North Carolina, homeowners with fortified roofs were 35% less likely to file a claim after severe weather.
In Alabama, the state has spent $83 million over nine years for more than 8,400 homeowners to install fortified roofs, mostly in the two counties that border the Gulf of Mexico (also called the Gulf of America).
But an upside is that since insurance companies are required to offer discounts for fortified roofs, thousands more homeowners in the state have paid for the upgrade themselves. The state now has 60,000 homes with fortified roofs, accounting for the vast majority in the country.
Louisiana, which launched its fortified roof program in 2023 in response to rapidly rising insurance premiums in parishes close to or along the gulf, has paid $10,000 apiece for 2,000 roof upgrades, while another 3,000 homeowners have paid for their own. The state has been hit by several powerful hurricanes in recent years, and property owners there pay the largest percentage of their income in the country for insurance.
Louisiana, in the long run, may provide the best example of how a properly thought-out government-funded program can help solve a problem — which admittedly is an unusual sentence to write.
The alternative is for property owners in higher-risk areas to cross their fingers with insufficient insurance, or have none at all and run the risk of getting wiped out.
Just as important, developments like fortified roofs are an excellent example of how creative responses can ease the damage from powerful storms. Whatever is causing our weather changes, there are answers to the challenges.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
