Link: https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/long-beach-california-tropical-storm-rachel-5e32cecfd534dcc46e633af4eb7a5903

Why I shot this photo

I had been following news reports for several days about powerful waves hitting beachfront homes in Long Beach, California, and the damage seemed to be getting worse. Monday was expected to be one of the last days of the strongest waves generated by the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel, so I decided to go see this for myself.

The waves had been pounding these homes for days, washing away sand and threatening their foundations. I was struck by how little protection seemed to remain between the homes and the ocean.

NGL, it's always puzzled me when people build right next to rivers, lakes, and oceans.

I live near the Missouri River, and it doesn't flood often, but it gets a catastrophic flood once or twice a century at least.

Rivers it’s because the towns originally started from using the river to power saw mills, flour mills, or other stuff. We are in a thousand year flood zone ourself, but most of the city (99%) is out of even the 1000 zone. Theres no sense in having to travel a long distance from the mill, especially when it’s difficult even by horse.

I totally get that. Historically it did make much more sense, but people are still doing it now despite the heightened probability of those risks.

Less so here in KC, as we did have a catastrophic flood in the 90's, so the memory of that keeps new developments away from the flood risk and our anti-flood infrastructure here is quite good.

Crazy. Why is anyone living near sea level on a coast, now? I looked at flood maps before buying my house.

Asked a friend living in the liquification zone, inland, PNW, if thinking about “the big one” hitting bothered her.

She said, this is my house, what am I supposed to do, panic about a maybe? What does anyone do?

And the price of houses there, and in CA, aren’t going down. Florida, most of the state is at sea level.

Land titles and taxes, some people are only staying in their current homes because taxes are antiquated and aren’t updated. They wouldn’t be able to afford paying modern taxes, but also, everyone else is stuck paying for shortfall. It’s a shitty system.

It’s a real unfair system when an old million dollar house has $100 a month taxes while a modern $70k condo has $1,200.

Partly the reason why people live in tornado alley, cheap taxes, it’s just worth it to some people.

Poverty definitely plays into it. No doubt.

Yeah, when I bought my condo, I purposely bought on an upper floor in part because I live in a city that's geographically close to a river. Though the probability of it affecting my building is exceedingly low thanks to distance and anti-flood infrastructure.

Nice

It’s a vicious circle, they’re paying out the nose in utilities or otherwise wasteful house design (likely). Some can modernize without triggering a tax update, but loopholes will always exist. Do they need the 1 million dollar house? It’s paid off most likely, since its generational, how most of the tax exemptions work. So it’s not even poverty, it’s a choice to live in that type of “means”.

Most of it is just attatchment. I don’t understand it myself, it’s a house, like a car, they’re meant to have specific uses and may need to change as you live your life. Why do I want a 4 bedroom house for just me and my wife? There’s not enough room for my kids families, and they’re gonna want they’re own place.

Moving to a senior home or a condo later in life just makes sense.

Most of the Long Beach shoreline is behind a break. It's pretty far out, but protects the harbor and most of the shoreline. I wonder where this is?

The only large city in my province has the exact same problem. So a guy bet his political career on building a diversion around the city which has been so successful that it was recently expanded to be able to help with even bigger floods. I happen to live in that protective zone and my biggest regret about the situation is that it ended this politician's career.

they should not even allow housing there. it should all be public parks in and around water boundaries.