Sponsors (3)
The bill increases public access to flood-risk, claims, and mitigation data—improving community planning, accountability, and research—while raising privacy risks, potential market harms, and ongoing costs that fall on taxpayers and property owners.
Homeowners and local governments gain access to property-level flood risk, claims, and mitigation status so they can make better insurance, mitigation, and planning decisions (including identifying which properties need buyouts or repairs).
Communities can identify and prioritize unrepaired multiple-loss properties for mitigation or buyout programs, improving risk reduction and targeting limited grant resources.
Taxpayers and communities benefit from greater NFIP transparency and publicly listed community compliance information, which can strengthen accountability, enforcement, and corrective actions.
Homeowners face increased privacy and targeting risks because publishing ZIP-code/census-block property, claims, and policy histories could expose sensitive information that private actors might use to raise premiums or solicit owners.
Taxpayers will bear ongoing costs to create and operate the mandated open-source databases and tools (FEMA/NFIP operational expenses), which could raise program costs or premiums.
Public disclosure of community compliance, building dates, and loss counts could stigmatize communities and depress property values, placing fiscal and political pressure on local governments to rapidly correct noncompliance.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires FEMA to publish detailed NFIP property-, community-, and program-level data in open, searchable databases with ZIP Code or census-block resolution.
Official title: To amend the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 to require that certain information is made publicly available, and for other purposes.
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, open-source databases for property-, community-, and program-level information. The bill defines key terms (loss ratio and multiple-loss property) and mandates publication of specified data—claims, premiums, mitigation status, map status, and community compliance metrics—at ZIP Code or census-block resolution while protecting personal privacy. Sets a one-year deadline for FEMA to establish and maintain a publicly searchable community database showing compliance findings, enforcement actions, counts of pre/post-map properties in special flood hazard areas, counts of claims outside mapped flood zones, numbers of multiple-loss properties, and the portion of community area in special flood hazard areas.