Sponsors (3)
The bill increases public access to flood-risk, claims, and mitigation data to improve planning, accountability, and targeted mitigation, but does so at the risk of homeowner privacy loss, potential market/insurance harms, community stigmatization, and added taxpayer or premium-funded costs.
Homeowners and local governments gain access to property-level flood risk, claims, and mitigation status so they can make better insurance, planning, and mitigation/buyout decisions.
Greater transparency through public community compliance listings and open-source models/tools improves NFIP accountability and helps researchers, insurers, and planners develop better risk assessments and mitigation solutions.
Communities can identify and prioritize unrepaired multiple-loss properties for mitigation and buyouts using public counts and mitigation status, enabling targeted use of limited mitigation funds.
Releasing detailed claims and policy histories could expose sensitive financial information and enable private actors to target properties for higher premiums or unwanted solicitations.
Publishing ZIP-code or census-block property data risks homeowner privacy despite PII protections and could make individual properties more identifiable.
Creating and maintaining the mandated open-source databases and tools will impose operational costs on FEMA paid by taxpayers or through NFIP premiums.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires FEMA to publish property- and community-level NFIP data and tools in searchable public databases at ZIP-code or census-block resolution with privacy protections.
Introduced September 26, 2025 by W. Greg Steube · Last progress September 26, 2025
Requires FEMA to publish detailed National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) data and tools to the public and to build searchable public databases with fine geographic resolution. The agency must provide property-level risk and limited claims/policy data, identify repetitive-loss properties lacking mitigation, and create an open-source electronic data system for immediate public access, while protecting personally identifiable information. Also directs FEMA to create and maintain, within one year of enactment, a publicly searchable community database that shows community compliance status, counts of properties relative to flood map dates, claims outside mapped flood zones, multiple-loss property totals, and the share of each community inside special flood hazard areas (in percent and square miles).