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Plus a note on batteries.
Rooftop solar is not like other types of consumer technology. Even though the end result is having a bunch of electrical equipment installed on the roof of your home, the process of getting solar is more like doing a bathroom renovation than buying a flat screen TV. To get the results you’re looking for, the most important decisions you’ll make are not the brand or model of the panels, but rather who you hire for the job, the size of your system, and how you finance it.
There’s a bunch more choices you’ll have to navigate along the way, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. One expert I spoke with told me that sometimes the customers who are the most excited about getting solar end up bailing, the victims of decision fatigue.
We created this guide to save you from that fate. So take a deep breath, take my hand, and let’s walk down the metaphorical hardware store aisle and get you the rooftop solar solution you’re dreaming of.
Roger Horowitz is the director of Go Solar programs at Solar United Neighbors, a national nonprofit that serves as an unbiased resource for homeowners interested in solar. Horowitz manages and provides technical support to the company’s Solar Help Desk team.
Tony Vernetti is a senior trainer at Enphase Energy, a company that produces inverters, batteries, and EV chargers, where he trains solar sales and installation teams. Before joining Enphase in 2020, Vernetti spent 12 years working for rooftop solar companies in California.
Nate Bowieis the vice president of residential sales at ReVision Energy, an employee-owned solar company operating throughout northern New England. Bowie has been selling solar for ReVision for 15 years.
While the actual installation of the system should only take one to two days, the entire process from initial outreach to grid connection takes two to four months on average, according to Solar United Neighbors.
Example: The highest rated solar panels for 2024 according to EnergySage.com are SunPower's M-Series 440 watt model. If you install 20 of these, the system will be capable of generating 8,800 watts, or 8.8 kilowatts in direct sun.
When you start searching for information about solar on the internet, you might come across advertisements or commercials promoting free solar panels. There is no such thing. These ads are typically schemes to collect your personal data and sell it to solar companies looking for leads, and the federal government is starting to
crack down on them.
It is possible to install solar with zero up-front costs if you lease the system or take out a loan to finance it, but in both cases you will still owe monthly payments. It is also rare that anyone is able to offset 100% of their utility bill. You can get close, but you will likely still owe at least a connection fee to your utility company.
Most homeowners in the U.S. can benefit from installing solar as long as local energy policies are favorable. Placing the panels on a south-facing roof is optimal, but not necessary. If your panels face due west, you’ll only lose about 10% of potential generation, according to Vernetti. “They still produce a ton of energy. They’re still very effective. It's just a little bit less than if they're facing south,” he said. An east-facing roof is also viable in most cases.
You don’t have to worry about shoveling snow off the roof or anything like that. But like any other electronic devices, solar panels, inverters, and batteries can break or malfunction, and your system may require servicing at some point. Pay close attention to your warranties (more on that later). If you lease the system, you do not have to worry about this as much because the third-party owner will be responsible for maintenance.
In order to design a system that meets your needs and budget, solar companies will ask for a copy of your most recent electricity bill or, ideally, your annual energy consumption history. Make sure you have this information handy before you reach out for quotes.
Some utilities include your annual energy consumption, broken out by month, at the bottom of your electric bill. If you don’t see it, you should be able to log into your utility account online and download either your statements from the past year or a spreadsheet of your monthly electric meter readings.
In most of the U.S., you will find you have the option either to lease your solar panels or buy them outright. You don’t have to decide which way you want to go before you get started, but it’s helpful to think through the pros and cons of each.
Heatmap Recommends leasing if: You’re fairly certain you’ll keep your house for the next 15 to 20 years; you can’t afford the system outright, but you don’t want to take out a loan; your priority is to generate clean energy and reduce emissions, but you don’t want to spend too much time figuring out what you want or worrying about the system’s maintenance.
Heatmap Recommends buying if: You have the cash in hand; you might sell your house in the next 20 years; you know you want to have control over the details of your project.
The federal government offers a 30% tax credit for solar installations (and batteries) that covers parts and labor. It can significantly reduce the cost of getting solar, even if you don’t have a lot of tax liability in the year that you install the system. The credit will roll over to subsequent tax years.
Example: If you spend $25,000 installing solar in 2024, you’ll be eligible to take $7,500 off your federal income tax bill. If you only owe $3,000 in federal taxes in 2024, you’ll get $3,000 back and will be eligible to claim the remaining $4,500 for the 2025 tax year. If in 2025 you only owe $3,000 again, you can claim the remaining $1,500 in 2026.
Additional tax credits and rebates may also be offered by your state energy office, city, or utility. Contractors should be able to help you figure out what you’re eligible for, and you can wait to talk to them to learn more. However, incentives change frequently, and contractors don’t always keep up, so you might want to review the options in your area independently.
It will also be helpful to understand your state’s net metering policy, as that will determine how quickly your investment in solar will pay off and may also dictate how big your system can be. Some states, like New Jersey, also allow homeowners to generate additional income through the sale of solar renewable energy credits, or SRECS.
Where to look for more information:
One of the worst things that could happen is you install rooftop solar panels, and then later find out you have a leak or some other problem with your roof. “Removal and replacement of an array for a reroof is expensive and could significantly impact the owner’s return on investment,” Bowie told me. While metal roofs last a very long time and are unlikely to need a replacement, asphalt shingle roofs generally have a useful life of 25 to 30 years, Bowie said. You should be fine if your roof is less than 10 years old, but if not, you may need some roofing work done before your solar panels are installed.
If you don’t know how old your roof is, Vernetti recommended having a roofing contractor inspect it. He added that there’s varying opinions on this, with some solar experts recommending replacement if the roof is only 5 years old. “In my opinion, scrapping a 5 year old roof is wasteful and goes against the goal of sustainability,” he said.
“A good solar contractor will help evaluate the roof conditions and should recommend replacement when necessary, even if it is just to replace the roof on the roof plane where the solar panels will go,” said Bowie.
Solar contractors range from local mom and pop shops, to regional providers like ReVision Energy, which operates in multiple states in the Northeast, to national companies that install across the country like Sunrun and Sunnova.
“The advantage of going with a large company is that they have the ability to offer financing the smaller companies might not be able to. With a regional company, you can actually walk to their office and knock on the door and talk to somebody if you want to,” said Vernetti.
Heatmap Recommends: Contact at least one local company and one national company to get a good sense of your options. Always get at least three quotes!
If you are calling installers directly, here are some tips for what you should ask for or look for in a quote. (If you are using an online resource like EnergySage that finds quotes for you, use the following to help you ask follow-up questions or refine the proposals.)
A few questions you should ask:
One of the first questions an installer might ask you is how big you want the system to be. You may want to see quotes for multiple options in order to compare them. Options include:
Heatmap Recommends: Oversize your system if you can afford it.
Why?
Exceptions:
Most installers will include a financing option in their quote. Horowitz noted that some installers advertise very low interest rates that are below market rate. They are typically able to do this by paying a “dealer fee” to the bank, which they incorporate into the price of your installation — in other words, if your interest rate seems too good to be true, the total cost of your installation will likely be higher than it otherwise would be. To get a better sense of the true cost, ask for quotes both with and without financing options.
Adding energy storage, a.k.a. a battery, to your solar array can add another 10 grand or more to the project cost. But there are a few reasons it might be worth it:
In conclusion, if you just want back-up power, any battery that’s large enough to power your essential systems should do. If you want to pay off the investment, look into time-of-use rates. If you want your investment to go further for decarbonization, ask your contractor if there are local grid services programs available, and if any of their products are compatible.
After you get a few quotes, you’re going to want to spend some time comparing them, asking questions, and potentially soliciting additional quotes with variations on the system. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or you don’t have the time or patience to sort through the details on your own, you can also call the Solar United Neighbors Help Desk, which offers a free quote review service.
The most important number on the quote is the price per watt, not the total system cost. That is the number you should be comparing between different installers, as the quotes may be for differently sized systems.
You should also compare the annual bill savings. If two different companies quote you significantly different savings for systems that are roughly the same size, one of them has likely done a more detailed analysis of your roof than the other.
“It doesn't matter what module you have, from which manufacturer, or what inverter you have. There really is no difference in what your system can produce if it's the same size,” said Bowie.
Lastly, if the quote is for a solar lease, or includes a financing option, look at the monthly payments.
Every installer has certain brands and types of equipment they work with. Our expert panel agreed that it’s important to look at the brand names the installer is offering for the solar panels, inverters, and batteries, and to make sure they are from reputable companies that have been around for at least five years — even if it means paying more. A quick internet search of the top 10 residential solar panel brands should give you a taste of what those companies are.
“It is definitely worth paying a little bit extra to have really good equipment,” Vernetti said.
You may also see installers advertise that they offer “Tier 1” solar panels. That means the manufacturer has been designated “bankable” by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The designation is more related to finance than product quality, but many solar companies use it as a rough proxy for reliability.
That being said, don’t get too bogged down in comparing solar brands.
“There's not a huge difference, typically, between one solar panel and the next of the Tier 1 manufacturers,” said Bowie. “A lot of solar companies will maybe offer one or two different manufacturers, and then maybe beyond that one or two different sizes.”
When it comes to inverters, you do want to pay attention to whether your quote includes string inverters, microinverters, or power optimizers. In a system with a string inverter, your panels will all be wired to one central inverter. This is generally the cheapest option, but it is less durable and may need to be replaced, said Vernetti, whose employer, Enphase, is the leading producer of microinverters. String inverters can also limit the output of your system if part of the roof gets more shade.
The other two options are more expensive but get around the issue with shade. A system with power optimizers is similar to one with a string inverter, but each panel will also have a small device attached to it that regulates the output and maximizes your system’s performance. By contrast, microinverters are small inverters attached to each individual panel. Both of these options also allow you to monitor each panel’s performance.
Bowie said the two were comparable in terms of performance and price. A key consideration, he said, is that your choice of inverter can begin to lock you into using the same brand of equipment on other home upgrades you might do down the line. “If you're an EnPhase customer, you're likely going to be going down the track of an EnPhase battery storage system,” he said. “Whether the customers know it or not, they're kind of being pushed down a path towards this manufacturer for more things in their home, like batteries, whole home controls, electric vehicle charging."
Your quote should provide information about warranties offered by the manufacturers of the panels, inverters, and batteries, as well as by the installation company. 25-year warranties are standard, but the details vary by installation company and by manufacturer. For example, your inverters may have a 25-year warranty, meaning you can get replacement inverters for free if any of them fails within that time period — but if you don’t have a warranty on labor, it could cost you several hundred dollars to get them installed.
“It's really important for customers to read the fine print and to talk with their local solar company who is quoting the system for them to uncover what the warranties mean,” said Bowie.
This is especially important if you are installing batteries. Ask your installer about both the equipment warranty and their policy is for servicing the equipment.
Most solar installers offer financing options. Your quote should include the name of the lender the installer works with, the down payment, monthly payment, financing term, and interest rate. However, you may find a better deal elsewhere. Horowitz noted that installers like using their own financing companies because it speeds up the sales process — they can approve you for a loan just by putting in your social security number, and sell it to you at the same time as the contract. But you may find a better deal elsewhere.
“Talk to your bank, talk to your credit union, look at home equity lines of credit, see what other options you have out there, and if those have lower interest rates or better payment terms,” said Horowitz. “You are not required to use their finance.”
After you’ve found an installer, settled on a system design, and secured financing, all that’s left to do is sign your contract. Then, you wait. Your installer will have to obtain permits from your city, county, or state, as well as an interconnection agreement with your utility.
One way to try to minimize the wait time is by working with an installer with lots of local experience. They’ll be better equipped to navigate the permitting process. For example, if you want Tesla solar panels but Tesla hasn’t done many installations in your community, it may take longer for the company to get through this stage.
After these two steps are complete, the solar company will reach out to you to schedule the installation, which should only take a few days.
After the system is installed, you may have to wait for a final inspection from your utility or a verified third party for permission to operate the system.
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The more Hurricanes Helene and Milton we get, the harder it is to ignore the need.
As the southeastern U.S. recovers from hurricanes Helene and Milton, the destruction the storms have left behind serves to underline the obvious: The need for technologies that support climate change adaptation and resilience is both real and urgent. And while nearly all the money in climate finance still flows into mitigation tech, which seeks to lower emissions to alleviate tomorrow’s harm, at long last, there are signs that interest and funding for the adaptation space is picking up.
The emergence and success of climate resilience advisory and investment firms such as Tailwind Climate and The Lightsmith Group are two signs of this shift. Founded just last year, Tailwind recently published a taxonomy of activities and financing across the various sectors of adaptation and resilience solutions to help clients understand opportunity areas in the space. Next year, the firm’s co-founder Katie MacDonald told me, Tailwind will likely begin raising its first fund. It’s already invested in one company, UK-based Cryogenx, which makes a portable cooling vest to rapidly reduce the temperature of patients experiencing heatstroke.
As for Lightsmith, the firm held the final close of its $186 million growth equity fund for climate adaptation solutions in 2022, which co-founder and managing director Jay Koh told me is one of the first, if not the first fund with a climate resilience focus. As Koh sees it, the evolution of climate adaptation and resilience technologies can be broken up into three stages, the first being “reactive and incremental.” That’s largely where we’re at right now, he said — think rebuilding a dam higher after it’s been breached in a flood, or making a firebreak broader after a destructive wildfire. Where he’s seeing interesting companies emerge, though, is in the more proactive second stage, which often involves anticipating and preparing for extreme weather events. “Let’s do a lot more data and analytics ahead of time. Let’s deploy more weather satellites. Let’s look at deploying artificial intelligence and other technologies to do better forecasting,” Koh explained to me.
The third and final stage, he said, could be categorized as “systemic or transcendent adaptation,” which involves systems-level changes as opposed to incremental improvements. Source Global, one of Lightsmith’s portfolio companies which makes solar-powered hydropanels that produce affordable drinking water, is an example of this. As Koh told me, “It’s not simply improving the efficiency of desalination filters by 5% or 10%. It’s saying, listen, we’re going to pull water out of the air in a way that we have never done before.”
But while the activity and interest around adaptation tech may be growing, the money just isn’t there yet. “We’re easily $50 [billion] to $60 billion below where we need to be today,” MacDonald told me. “And you know, we’re on the order of around $150 [billion] to $160 billion below where we need to be by 2030.” Everyone else I spoke with echoed the sentiment. “The latest statistics are that less than 5% of total climate finance tracked on planet Earth is attributable to adaptation and climate resilience,” Koh said. “Of that, less than 2% is private investment.”
There’s a few reasons why early-stage investors especially may be hesitant to throw their weight behind adaptation tech despite the clear need in the market. Amy Francetic, co-founder and managing general partner at Buoyant Ventures, which focuses on early-stage digital solutions for climate risk, told me that the main customer for adaptation solutions is often a government entity. “Municipalities and other government contracts, they’re hard to win, they’re slow to win, and they don’t pay that much, either, which is the problem.” Francetic told me. “So it’s not a great customer to have.”
One of Buoyant’s portfolio companies, the now defunct StormSensor, reinforced this lesson for Francetic. The company used sensors to track water flow within storm and sewage systems to prevent flooding and was able to arrange pilot projects with plenty of water agencies — but few of them converted into paying contracts. “The municipalities were willing to spend money on an experiment, but not so many of them had a larger budget.” Francetic told me. The same dynamic, she said, is also at play in the utility industry, where you often hear about new tech succumbing to “death by pilot.”
It’s not all doom and gloom, though, when it comes to working with larger, risk-averse agencies. AiDash, another of Lightsmith’s portfolio companies that uses artificial intelligence to help utilities assess and address wildfire risk, has five utility partnerships, and earlier this year raised $58.5 million in an oversubscribed Series C round. Francetic and MacDonald both told me they’re seeing the conversation around climate adaptation evolve to include more industry stakeholders. In the past, Francetic said, discussing resilience and adaptation was almost seen as a form of climate doomerism. “They said, oh, why are you doing that? It shows that you’re giving up.” But now, MacDonald told me that her experience at this year’s climate week in New York was defined by productive conversations with representatives from the insurance industry, banking sector, and venture capital arena about injecting more capital into the space.
Bill Clerico, the founder and managing partner of the venture firm Convective Capital, is also deeply familiar with the tricky dynamics of climate adaptation funding. Convective, founded in 2022, is solely dedicated to wildfire tech solutions. The firm’s portfolio companies span a range of technologies that address suppression, early identification, prevention, and insurance against damages, and are mainly looking to work with utilities, governments, and insurance companies. When I talked to Clerico back in August, he (understatedly) categorized these establishments as “not necessarily the most fast-moving or innovative.” But the bleak silver lining, he told me, is that extreme weather is forcing them to up their tempo. “There is so much destruction happening so frequently that it’s forcing a lot of these institutions to think about it totally differently and to embrace newer, more novel solutions — and to do it quickly.”
People, it seems, are starting to get real. But investors and startups alike are also just beginning to define exactly what adaptation tech encompasses and what metrics for success look like when they’re less measurable than, say, the tons of carbon sucked out of the atmosphere via direct air capture, or the amount of energy produced by a fusion reactor.
“Nobody wakes up in the morning and buys a loaf of adaptation. You don’t drive around in an adaptation or live in an adaptation,” Koh noted. “What you want is food, transport, shelter, water that is resilient and adapted to the effects of climate change.” What Koh and the team at Lightsmith have found is that many of the companies working on these solutions are hiding in plain sight. “They call themselves business continuity or water efficiency or agricultural precision technologies or supply chain management in the face of weather volatility,” Koh explained.
In this way, the scope of adaptation technology balloons far beyond what is traditionally climate-coded. Lightsmith recently invested in a Brazil-based digital health company called Beep Saude, which enables patients to get rapid, in-home diagnostics, vaccination services, and infusion therapies. It falls under the umbrella of climate adaptation tech, Koh told me, because rising temperatures, increased rainfall, and deforestation in the country have led to a rapid increase in mosquitoes spreading diseases such as dengue fever and the Zika virus.
Naturally, measuring the efficacy of solutions that span such a vast problem space means a lot of customization. “Your metric might be, how many people have asked for water in a drought-prone area?” MacDonald told me. “And with health, it might be, how many children are safe from wildfire smoke during fire season? And for ecosystems, it might be, how many hectares of ecosystem have been saved as a means to reduce storm surge?” Insurance also brings up a host of additional metrics. As Francetic told me, “we measure things like lives and livelihoods covered or addressed. We measure things like losses covered or underwriting dollars spent on this.”
No matter how you categorize it or measure it, the need for these technologies is not going away. “The drivers of adaptation and climate resilience demand are physics and time,” Koh told me. “Whoever develops climate resilience and adaptation technology will have a competitive advantage over any other company, any other society, and the faster that we can scale it up, and the smarter and more equitable we are about deploying it, the better off we will all be.”
On the Cybercab rollout, methane leaks, and Taylor Swift
Current conditions: England just had its one of its worst crop harvests ever due to extreme rainfall last winter • Nevada and Arizona could see record-breaking heat today, while freeze warnings are in effect in four northeastern states • The death toll from Hurricane Milton has climbed to 16.
Tesla unveiled a prototype of its “Cybercab” self-driving robotaxi last night at an investor event in California. The 2-seater vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals, and will feature wireless induction charging. CEO Elon Musk said the vehicle will cost less than $30,000, with the goal of starting production by 2027, depending on regulatory approvals. At the same event, Musk unveiled the autonomous “Robovan,” which can carry 20 people.
Tesla
A UN expert group agreed this week on some key rules around carbon markets and carbon crediting. This will be a major topic at COP29 next month, where negotiators will be tasked with deciding how countries can use international carbon markets. As the Financial Timesexplained, a carbon market “would allow governments to claim other countries’ emission cuts towards their own climate targets by trading instruments that represent one tonne of carbon dioxide removed or saved from the atmosphere.” The experts this week said projects seeking carbon credits will have to carry out an extensive risk assessment process aimed at flagging and preventing human rights abuses and environmental harm. The assessment will be reviewed by external auditors.
The first detections from Carbon Mapper’s Tanager-1 satellite are in, just two months after the satellite launched. It spotted a 2.5-mile-long methane plume spewing from a landfill in Pakistan, which Carbon Mapper estimates could be releasing 2,600 pounds of methane per hour. It also identified a methane plume in the oilfields of the Permian Basin in Texas, estimated to be releasing 900 pounds of methane hourly. And it found a carbon dioxide plume over a coal-fired power plant in South Africa releasing roughly 1.3 million pounds of CO2 per hour.
A Permian Basin methane plume.Carbon Mapper
In a press release, the company said the observations were “a preview of what’s to come as Carbon Mapper will leverage Tanager-1 to scale-up emissions observations at unprecedented sensitivity across large areas.”
As the cleanup efforts continue in the southeast after back-to-back hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated the region, pop star Taylor Swift announced she is donating $5 million to relief efforts. Specifically she has given money to a national food bank organization called Feeding America. The charity’s CEO said the funds “will help communities rebuild and recover, providing essential food, clean water, and supplies to people affected by these devastating storms.” Last week country music legend Dolly Parton said she personally donated $1 million to the Mountain Ways Foundation, and then another $1 million through her Dollywood foundation.
AccuWeather estimated that Milton caused up to $180 billion in economic losses, and Helene caused up to $250 billion in losses. Two rapid attribution studies out of Imperial College London found that human-caused climate change could be credited for roughly half the economic damages from the storms. “This analysis clearly shows that our failure to stop burning fossil fuels is already resulting in incredible economic losses,” said Dr. Friederike Otto, co-founder of World Weather Attribution.
In Rhode Island, the Providence City Council passed an amendment this week that bans the construction of new gas stations “while prioritizing the development and installation of electric vehicle charging stations.” That would make Providence the first city on the East Coast to enact such a ban. Mayor Brett Smiley could veto it, but the city council could override a veto with a two-thirds majority, The Boston Globereported. Several towns in California have already banned new gas pumps.
Chiquita has developed a new hybrid banana variety it says is resistant to some fungal diseases that have threatened the future of America’s most popular fruit. The variety is called Yelloway 1.
Chiquita Brands International
It’s known as the 50% rule, and Southwest Florida hates it.
After the storm, we rebuild. That’s the mantra repeated by residents, businesses and elected officials after any big storm. Hurricane Milton may have avoided the worst case scenario of a direct hit on the Tampa Bay area, but communities south of Tampa experienced heavy flooding just a couple weeks after being hit by Hurricane Helene.
While the damage is still being assessed in Sarasota County’s barrier islands, homes that require extensive renovations will almost certainly run up against what is known as the 50% rule — or, in Southwest Florida, the “dreaded 50% rule.”
In flood zone-situated communities eligible to receive insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program, any renovations to repair “substantial damage” — defined as repairs whose cost exceeds 50% of the value of the structure (not the land, which can often be quite valuable due to its proximity to the water) — must bring the entire structure “into compliance with current local floodplain management standards.” In practice, this typically means elevating the home above what FEMA defines as the area’s “base flood elevation,” which is the level that a “100-year-flood” would reach, plus some amount determined by the building code.
The rule almost invites conflict. Because just as much as local communities and homeowners want to restore things to the way they were, the federal government doesn’t want to insure structures that are simply going to get destroyed. On Siesta Key, where Milton made landfall, the base flood elevation ranges from 7 feet to 9 feet, meaning that elevating a home to comply with flood codes could be beyond the means — or at least the insurance payouts — of some homeowners.
“You got a 1952 house that’s 1,400 square feet, and you get 4 feet of water,” Jeff Brandes, a former state legislator and president of the Florida Policy Project, told me on Wednesday, explaining how the rule could have played out in Tampa. “That means new kitchens and new bathrooms, all new flooring and baseboards and drywall to 4 or 5 feet.” That kind of claim could easily run to $150,000, which might well surpass the FEMA threshold. “Now all of the sudden you get into the 50% rule that you have the entire house up to current code levels. But then you have to do another half-a-million above what [insurance] paid you.”
Simple probability calculations show that a 100-year flood (which is really a flood elevation that has a 1-in-100 chance of occurring every year) has a more than 25% chance of occurring during the lifetime of a mortgage. If you browse Siesta Key real estate on Zillow, much of it is given a 100% chance of flooding sometime over the course of a 30-year mortgage, according to data analysis by First Street.
Sarasota County as a whole has around 62,000 NFIP policies with some $16.6 billion in total coverage (although more than 80% percent of households have no flood insurance at all). Considering that flood insurance is required in high-risk areas for federally-backed mortgages and for new homeowners insurance policies written by Florida’s state backed property insurer of last resort, Citizens, FEMA is likely to take a close interest in whether communities affected by Milton and Helene are complying with its rules.
If 2022’s Hurricane Ian is any indication, squabbles over the 50% rule are almost certain to emerge — and soon.
Earlier this year, FEMA told Lee County, which includes Fort Myers and Cape Coral, that it was rescinding the discount its residents and a handful of towns within it receive on flood insurance because, the agency claimed, more than 600 homeowners had violated the 50% rule after Hurricane Ian. Following an outcry from local officials and congressional representatives, FEMA restored the discount.
In their efforts to avoid triggering the rule, homeowners are hardly rogue actors. Local governments often actively assist them.
FEMA had initiated a similar procedure in Lee County the year before, threatening to drop homeowners from the flood insurance program for using possibly inaccurate appraisals to avoid the 50% rule before eventually relenting. The Fort Myers News Press reported that the appraisals were provided by the county, which was deliberately “lowering the amount that residents could use to calculate their repairs or rebuilds” to avoid triggering the rule.
Less than a month after Ian swept through Southwest Florida, Cape Coral advised residents to delay and slow down repairs for the same reason, as the rule there applied to money spent on repairs over the course of a year. Some highly exposed coastal communities in Pinellas County have been adjusting their “lookback rules” — the period over which repairs are totaled to see if they hit the 50% rule — to make them shorter so homeowners are less likely to have to make the substantive repairs required.
This followed similar actions by local governments in Charlotte County. As the Punta Gordon Sun put it, “City Council members learned the federal regulation impacts its homeowners — and they decided to do something about it.” In the Sarasota County community of North Port, local officials scrapped a rule that added up repair costs over a five-year period to make it possible for homeowners to rebuild without triggering elevation requirements.
When the 50% rule “works,” it can lead to the communities most affected by big storms being fundamentally changed, both in terms of the structures that are built and who occupies them. The end result of the rebuilding following Helene and Milton — or the next big storm to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast — or the one after that, and so on — may be wealthier homeowners in more resilient homes essentially serving as a flood barrier for everyone else, and picking up more of the bill if the waters rise too high again.
Florida’s Gulf Coast has long been seen as a place where the middle class can afford beachfront property. Elected officials’ resistance to the FEMA rule only goes to show just how important keeping a lid on the cost of living — quite literally, the cost of legally inhabiting a structure — is to the voters and residents they represent.
Still, said Brandes, “There’s the right way to come out of this thing. The wrong way is to build exactly back what you built before.”