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Aug. 29 marks 20 years since the landfall of Hurricane Katrina—a storm that reshaped the Gulf Coast forever.
On Alabama’s Dauphin Island, where the coastline has been steadily eroding from Katrina’s impact, ongoing storms, and rising sea levels, some homeowners are still paying property taxes on homes that literally sunk into the Gulf waters over the last two decades.
The island’s struggles highlight Katrina’s lasting effect on homeowners, and as extreme weather continues to intensify across the U.S., FEMA’s capacity to respond is being tested.
Dauphin Island’s vanishing coastline and the toll on residents
The beach on the west end of Dauphin Island was severed during Hurricane Katrina, leaving a gap 1.5 miles wide.
More than 300 homes were destroyed, and according to Dauphin Island’s mayor, Jeff Collier, some residents are still paying property taxes on the lots that are now underwater.
Collier says that since 2005 the land mass of Dauphin Island has been shrinking and shifting due to rising sea levels, and more recent storms like Tropical Storm Gordon and Hurricane Sally have accelerated the island’s erosion and displacement.
Collier is a lifelong resident who has lived on Dauphin Island for 64 years, and has been its mayor for 27.
“People here are storm-savvy, and we try to prepare the best we can,” he tells Realtor.com® exclusively. “It’s part of life on the coast, but it is a stress we live with. We are constantly monitoring the forecast during the six-month hurricane season, and I always breathe a sigh of relief when the season is over.”
When it comes to the stress, he adds that most people handle it “pretty well.”
“But some people do pack up and leave. Everybody deals with it differently. For the most part, once you’ve been here for a little while, it’s just part of what you know. It comes with the territory.”
Katrina’s long shadow on homeowners nationwide
Grant Clayton, a Louisiana resident who survived Hurricane Katrina and is the founder of real estate brokerage 1 Percent Lists, says there are plenty of neighborhoods still suffering Katrina’s aftermath, dealing with things like vacant properties, ongoing insurance disputes, and homes deemed “unsellable.”
This includes “anywhere on the Southshore in New Orleans, West Bank, St. Bernard Parish, and Bayou Region,” says Clayton.
Katrina also exposed the vulnerabilities of coastal communities not just in Louisiana, but across the country.
“Katrina really changed everything,” says real estate agent and investor Ron Myers of Ron Buys Florida Homes. “It showed how unprepared most of the country was for major storms and put a big bullseye on how risky coastal real estate can be. Now more than ever, insurance companies, lenders, and buyers have all been looking at properties through a different lens.”
Katrina made it much harder to buy a home in a flood zone, due to stricter lending practices and higher flood insurance costs.
“If you live in a high-risk flood zone, it’s tough to get private flood insurance, and when you do find it, you can expect it to be more expensive and have much tighter conditions,” says Gregg Barrett, CEO of insurer support firm WaterStreet Company. “Even the federal program has been raising premiums to reflect the increasing level of flood risk.”
In New Orleans, “there are many homes with insurance that costs upwards of $1,000 per month,” says Clayton, cost-prohibitive for most residents.
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Is FEMA ready for the next Katrina-level disaster?
Just before the milestone anniversary of Katrina, more than 180 current and former FEMA employees signed an open letter to Congress on Monday criticizing FEMA’s recent staff cuts, unqualified leadership, and poor management decisions.
They raised concerns that FEMA was no longer adequately prepared for a large-scale emergency like Katrina.
By Tuesday, the 36 current employees who signed that letter were placed on administrative leave effective immediately.
The open letter stated that the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (PKEMRA) introduced safeguards to ensure that the shortcomings of disaster preparation and response experienced before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina would not be repeated.
“However, two decades later, FEMA is enacting processes and leadership structures that echo the conditions PKEMRA was designed to prevent,” the letter warned.
Acting FEMA press secretary Daniel Llargues swiftly responded to these allegations in a statement:
“For too long, FEMA was bogged down by red tape, inefficiency, and outdated processes that failed to get disaster dollars into survivors’ hands. The Trump administration has made accountability and reform a priority so that taxpayer dollars actually reach the people and communities they are meant to help.”
Looking in from the outside, Dr. Samantha Montano, assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and author of “Disasterology: Dispatches From the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis,” tells Realtor.com she shares the concerns that the current and previous FEMA employees included in their open letter.
“The decisions made by the Trump administration in the past eight months put FEMA back to where they were in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina happened,” she says. “Although significant progress had been made since then, FEMA has now backslid, and they’re not ready to respond to any significant disaster.”