Higher ground
A homebuilder says he is hearing from people who want houses that won’t flood.
After Hurricane Harvey, Frankel Building Group started getting calls from flooded homeowners wanting to talk about building houses that won’t flood. “It’s no way to get business,” Jim Frankel said. But the founder of the 30-year-old custom homebuilding company proudly reports that FBG homes in Bellaire, The Woodlands and elsewhere didn’t flood during Harvey.
Once the insurance claims are paid out and the city’s more affluent flood victims decide to start anew, companies like his are likely to see an uptick.
“We’re seeing a ton of people who are ready to start over and get rid of their old house,” said Frankel, 66, who spoke with the Chronicle about Houston’s chronic flooding problems.
Q: Do you build in floodprone areas?
A: Every area in Houston is subject to flood. It’s either going to be rising water or poor drainage. Nothing built in Houston, Texas, should be done without consideration of flooding. I built a section in The Woodlands. We did everything to the flood of record, and we used the hydrologists that The Woodlands used to do all of their water movement studies, and everything we built was way above the level of the water. But it was stunning. People in boats going down the streets. The streets are designed to go underwater and then when they drain, you can drive. Q: You say everyone should
build with flooding in mind, but that’s not the case, is it?
A: No. People see flooding kind of the same way they see the speed limit, and they don’t appreciate what happens if you don’t observe the speed limit and the laws of science, and all of a sudden somebody’s going 150 mph, has a wreck, and they’re dead. They say: ‘Wow, that didn’t seem so fast. I thought I had it.’
Q: How do you think Harvey is going to affect the housing market?
A: I think it’ll be more expensive to build. And I think people will be chastened by this terrible storm. I think it’s going to have some obvious impact on certain areas that have been flooded two and three times.
Q: Will building regulations change?
A: I think they ought to. I think to keep rebuilding the houses that are in hopelessly low areas is just a waste. They shouldn’t even allow them to be rebuilt without being elevated. A friend of mine’s house has flooded three times in three years. You have to have flood insurance, but after a while they ought to say: ‘No, I’m not going to cover it. I just can’t pay you $250,000 to rebuild your house and you’re paying $670 for a flood insurance policy.’ It’s nuts. Q: What can be done? A: They had a plan to do a giant culvert under I-10, and they left it out because of budgetary reasons. If that culvert was under I-10, nothing out west would have flooded. It would have cost (up to) $50 million, and it would have saved billions. Some of the solutions I’ve read are wonderful where they’re trying to say: Why doesn’t every flood control district become one big regional flood control district? Why not? The water that goes through all these counties affects each other. This isn’t something we can’t fix. The mayor wants to raise taxes for a year? Good for him. Very smart. I’m in. I’ll pay. If every new house has to contribute X amount of dollars for flood abatement, fine. Don’t take those dollars and just hire a bunch of people to staff some department they should have had. They have a problem the same way we have a problem with Medicare, with Social Security. Being political about it isn’t going to help anybody in this city.