GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — Rocking on his front porch overlooking the Mississippi Sound, former Gulfport Mayor Billy Hewes questions how anyone wouldn’t want to live there.
“People are always going to gravitate to the water,” he said. “And we have a beautiful waterfront.”
But it was far from certain that people would return after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which killed 238 people in Mississippi and left only concrete slabs in many areas. With beachfront rebuilding crawling along a decade later, Gulfport began offering property tax breaks to those who built near the water. Hewes said the goal was for people to “build back better, quicker, help kick-start the economy.”
Where to encourage building is a thorny decision for local governments in areas exposed to floods or wildfires. Despite risks including rising sea levels, places need residents and taxpayers. Like other Gulf Coast cities after Katrina, Gulfport required residents to build at higher elevations and enforced a stronger building code. But most residents near the water are in at least a moderate-risk flood zone. Nationwide, many more homes are being built in flood zones than are being removed.
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“The local government was not necessarily thinking we need people to build in this flood-prone place,” Miyuki Hino, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who researches flooding, said of such decisions. “They were thinking we have this land that’s underutilized and we can increase our property tax revenue.”
Storm Left a ‘Postapocalyptic’ Wasteland
Allen Baker lived through 1969’s Hurricane Camille in neighboring Long Beach and thought he knew what to expect after Katrina. But the 2005 storm was far worse. His historic beachfront home was blown to bits by what witnesses said was a tornado spun off by the hurricane.
“Coming back, there was no home,” Baker said.
Overlooking the Mississippi Sound, Allen Baker talks in front of his home, Aug. 12, 2025, in Gulfport, Miss. (AP Photo/Jeff Amy) ” data-image-caption=”
Overlooking
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