As climate change threatens coastal areas with more frequent and intense flooding, the federal government has adopted a greater focus on mitigating the effects of natural disasters. While neighborhoods differ in terms of physical risk exposure, they also differ in social vulnerability—the characteristics that influence a community’s ability to safely weather a storm, withstand disruptions to employment and housing, navigate the rebuilding process, and eventually return to normal. Funding for federal flood-mitigation projects administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is currently distributed according to a simple metric—the benefits of a project must outweigh its costs. FEMA’s approach to cost-benefit analysis (CBA), however, primarily measures physical risk to property while neglecting the long-term, intangible social costs incurred by vulnerable communities. This approach has resulted in higher-property-value communities receiving a disproportionate share of mitigation infrastructure, while lower-income communities are either left without protection or relocated. The distribution of mitigation funding therefore plays a role in exacerbating place-based inequality.

This Comment proposes ways in which FEMA could better account for the distributional effects of its projects and promote efficient policies that take into account the full range of social and economic costs associated with natural disasters. It begins by detailing how FEMA neglects to consider distributional outcomes in its mitigation programs, consistent with the single-minded focus on economic efficiency prevalent in federal regulatory decision-making. Next, it surveys empirical research documenting the ways in which FEMA’s use of CBA exacerbates wealth inequality and social vulnerability to flooding. The Comment then considers various legal avenues for redressing the disparate impacts resulting from FEMA’s policies, concluding that none are likely to be successful. Instead, it offers five policy adjustments that FEMA could implement in its cost-benefit methodology to ensure that resources for flood mitigation are more equitably distributed, emphasizing ways in which these better accord with the agency’s own focus on economic efficiency.

由于气候变化威胁到沿海地区的洪水泛滥更加频繁和严重，联邦政府已更加重视减轻自然灾害的影响。虽然社区在物理风险暴露方面有所不同，但它们在社会脆弱性方面也有所不同——这些特征影响社区安全度过风暴、抵御就业和住房中断、在重建过程中进行并最终恢复正常的能力。由联邦紧急事务管理局 (FEMA) 管理的联邦防洪项目的资金目前根据一个简单的指标分配——项目的收益必须超过其成本。然而，FEMA 的成本收益分析 (CBA) 方法主要衡量财产的物理风险，而忽略了长期、弱势社区产生的无形社会成本。这种方法导致高资产价值社区获得了不成比例的缓解基础设施份额，而低收入社区要么得不到保护，要么被搬迁。因此，缓解资金的分配在加剧基于地点的不平等方面发挥了作用。

该评论提出了 FEMA 可以更好地考虑其项目的分配影响并促进考虑与自然灾害相关的所有社会和经济成本的有效政策的方法。它首先详细说明 FEMA 如何在其缓解计划中忽略考虑分配结果，这与联邦监管决策中普遍存在的一心一意关注经济效率是一致的。接下来，它调查了实证研究，记录了 FEMA 使用 CBA 加剧财富不平等和社会对洪水的脆弱性的方式。该评论然后考虑了各种法律途径来纠正 FEMA 政策造成的不同影响，得出的结论是没有一个可能成功。反而，