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Chaney: Affordability issues plague Gulf Coast |
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Tuesday, 05 May 2009 |
By BRIAN HAWKINS
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Efforts to rebuild affordable housing and make homeowner’s insurance affordable in Mississippi’s Gulf Coast counties must become a priority if those three counties are ever to fully recover from Hurricane Katrina, State Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney says.
“If the Coast doesn’t come back, the rest of the state won’t come back,” Chaney said on Monday.
Chaney, addressing the Starkville Rotary Club on Monday, noted that 16 percent of the state’s population lives and works in Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties, and little has been done since the initial year following Katrina to make substantial progress in rebuilding the communities in those counties.
“There is very little that has been done on the Coast since the initial year of cleanup,” said Chaney.
A major problem is a lack of affordable housing and the necessary insurance policies homeowners need, Chaney said.
“We’ve got to have affordable housing with affordable insurance that goes with it. People can’t afford to live on the Coast,” he said.
Corporate officials with Northrop Grumman — the parent company to Ingalls Shipbuilding in Jackson County — recently told him that the company plans to hire some 5,000 people to work on the Coast, but that finding affordable housing and the necessary accompanying insurance policies was difficult.
If the workers are not able to do that, the projects on which those workers would be assigned may have to be moved to other Northrop Grumman facilities in Virginia or Rhode Island where housing costs and insurance rates are more affordable, Chaney said.
Key components in making housing and insurance more affordable include implementation of more stringent building codes, construction of new homes above the flood plain and ensuring proper land use regulations are in place, Chaney said.
Many construction techniques can help make homes on the Coast more able to withstand hurricane force winds and water.
One such example is the use of a polymer glue where plywood used in roofs would be reinforced with the glue along with nailing it to the rafters, he said.
This makes the roofs much more resistant to hurricane force winds even up to a Category 3 storm, he said.
“That’s the kind of thing that will help mitigate a home against a hurricane,” said Chaney, whose work in the state Senate prior to his election as insurance commissioner focused on helping to address insurance needs for Gulf Coast residents.
During his speech Monday, Chaney also gave Rotarians an overview of some of the major legislation adopted by state lawmakers during the 2009 session that will positively impact the insurance industry in Mississippi.
He also announced that the Insurance Department’s Web site had undegone a major revamp, with the new site launched last week. The site, he said, has far more resources for insurance industry representatives and the general public.
The new Web site can be found at http://www.mid.state.ms.us.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 08 May 2009 )
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