o make values comparable across counties with different assessment cycles and price levels, we express each property’s value as a percentile rank across all 1–4 family residential parcels in the study area
percentiling doesn't actually help with making things comparable across counties. percentiling mostly helps because assessed values in general trail market values, so we care more about relative assessed than absolute assessed
Discussion
my thoughts on the outline of this section: - pinch point recap, opportunity to increase funding + meet more demand - one para on lower-value, less-white - one para on repeat vs. not; perhaps targeting could factor in a property's flood history more than just if they flooded really badly in one event (which is how most HMGP works) - what we learn about mechanisms - limitations in methods - limitations conceptually in terms of not knowing if what we see is "good for people" or not
).
there is no discussion in here about the repeat-flooded panel. it's notable tha the share applying is still small, but at least is double the share in the "all-flooded" group. Also notable that their success rate in applying is about the same as in the all-flooded group.
and we discuss any sensitivity of our results to this distinction in the Supplementary Materials.
flagging since we do not currently do this
the Repetitive Flood Claims Program (RFC), and the Severe Repetitive Loss Grant Program (SRL)
is FMA the combination of RFC and SRL?
This property-resolved flood history is, to our knowledge, the first parcel-scale, multi-event reconstruction of repetitive flooding in the region, and serves as the reference set against which subsequent pipeline stages are measured.
well, helena's own paper does this for buildings, so I'm not sure this is really true
located
I don't know where this should go ,but i think we should acknowledge that we don't know if this distribution is equitable in that we don't know if people are better off after being mitigated than before (especially in the case of buyouts). i would want to head off people reading this and going "oh ok everything looks fine" when there could be elements of coercion into applying into buyouts + ending up worse off than before. So I think we want to frame it as "we can rule out some procedural issues, but we're not saying that just because lower-value properties are getting the money, there are no issues"
Neighborhood
similar to my comment above, i would compress this paragraph a lot and maybe even combine it with the one above.
The neighborhood-scale selection we observe could reflect several mechanisms: cost-benefit analysis criteria that favor lower-cost properties, programmatic concentration of buyouts to enable contiguous open-space conversion, or differential outreach by local governments to particular neighborhoods. Disentangling these is an important direction for future work.
I think we should have a stand-alone paragraph that addresses what we DO learn about mechanisms from this analysis. we see no evidence that the CBA is skewing selection to HIGHER value properties, and in theory that should apply across states (since it's a federal rule). We also don't see evidence that a bunch of communities are just choosing to not apply - but the state match could have a lot to do with that. It doesn't look like the communities are only going to expensive properties and asking them to apply, otherwise we'd see a more expensive applicant pool.
Among the small fraction of properties that do receive funding, the composition shifts toward less expensive properties and lower-value neighborhoods. Funded properties sit at the th percentile of the study-area property-value distribution, compared to the th percentile of all flooded properties. The shift occurs primarily between neighborhoods rather than within them: within-block-group percentiles for funded properties differ only modestly from those at the flooded stage, indicating that funded properties tend to be typical homes in lower-value neighborhoods rather than the cheaper homes within any given neighborhood.
this feels like too much text to dedicate to recapping results; let's compress
This replicates at parcel resolution what the prior literature has documented at the county scale.
delete, duplicative of above
applicants
One aspect it'd be good to bring in here is that the mitigations have been repeatedly found to be cost-effective, so expanding the funding could likely translate to more cost-effective mitigations -- basically, there are good reasons to expand the pool, not just make the pool more competitive
While
because the long methods are at the end, i think we need one paragraph at the start of results that describes briefly what we actually did, so that the jump into results isn't so abrupt.
A map of our data (apps, mits, the study area) would also be good to include i think
eligible
need to remove language around "eligible" throughout
fall disproportionately on lower-income households in under-resourced communities
I'm not sure what this means. the requirements apply to everyone, so how can they "fall disproportionately" on some households? it's possible that it can be a more difficult challenge to meet for some households, e.g. heirs property issues, being able to be at home at the time the inspector shows up, etc. But I think we would need a citation for that specifically.
.
Insert text here about the 25% match. something like "providing the 25% non-federal share can also be a barrier. in some states, the state government covers the matching share. If not, the funding has to come from local government budgets or individual homeowners, which can significantly constrain participation"
North Carolina
rephrase this generally as we haven't started talking about NC at all yet. "states, local governments, and in some cases homeowners are responsible for the remaining 25% non-federal match."
A
1) i would move this paragraph down to the next section where we describe all the possible reasons why disparities might arise. we already have a line on CBA at the end, so let's just put it all in one place
2) I would call this a potential driver of the disparity -- we don't actually know for sure this is happening. projects are also cheaper when they are for lower-value homes, so the cost side goes down in addition to the benefit side. Also, there are "exemptions" to the CBA rule -- things like "if an elevation costs less than X and the property was substantially damaged, it passes". So i'd frame it more as CBA might be one driver but that's not known.
Concerns about equitable access to FEMA assistance have been documented in the immediate aftermath of disasters for decades.
Pretty sure this is my sentence, but revise to: Concerns about equitable access to FEMA assistance in the aftermath of disasters have been extensively documented
The
Suggest restructuring this paragraph the fed gov't is the primary source of public assistance for disaster risk mitigation and post-disaster relief and recovery. Many federal agencies are involved in these efforts, including XYZ. We focus our analysis on FEMA...
is it true that FEMA's mitigation spending > USACE? Probably depends on how you define it
that are not being selected
replace with "applying and not being selected"
,
insert "grant programs" after (HMA)
, which bear a disproportionate flood burden,
i think this can be deleted, otherwise we need a specific citation (one that gets at distribution of impacts not just hazard)
in FEMA hazard mitigation grants alone
i think you can delete. not worth introducing the whole concept of FEMA hazard mitigation grants
projected climate changes will
adjust to "climate change is projected to intensify..."
more than twice the figure suggested by FEMA’s official flood maps,
suggest deleting