Why do you (and raganwald) portray the choice as assistance-or-total-abandonment?
Sure, provide infrequent rescues, emergency aid, and damage-mitigation. Just avoid complete 'make-whole' reimbursements, and make the costs come marginally more from those areas subject to frequent, foreseeable disasters... so that there's an incentive gradient for future moves/development to get-out-of-the-danger-zones. Not a "too bad" all-or-nothing ultimatum, but also not blank-checks for folly.
Otherwise, you're subsidizing more destruction and misery. That has been a real legacy of much unconditionally-'compassionate' weather aid, at least in USA flood and hurricane zones.
I've never lost a house because of a flood or hurricane or whatever, but I'm pretty sure that governments don't do make-whole reimbursements. Could be wrong..
That said, at least in Canada, I believe that federal, provincial and municipal governments share the burden of paying for restoration after a disaster. That is more or less what you suggest - there's a slight incentive to move away from Manitoba (for example), because they instituted a tax-hike to pay for their last flood. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2012/04/17/mb-b...
Sure, provide infrequent rescues, emergency aid, and damage-mitigation. Just avoid complete 'make-whole' reimbursements, and make the costs come marginally more from those areas subject to frequent, foreseeable disasters... so that there's an incentive gradient for future moves/development to get-out-of-the-danger-zones. Not a "too bad" all-or-nothing ultimatum, but also not blank-checks for folly.
Otherwise, you're subsidizing more destruction and misery. That has been a real legacy of much unconditionally-'compassionate' weather aid, at least in USA flood and hurricane zones.