It's really not that uncommon. Person buys a home near a river that floods every 30 years in 1980. Between 1980 and 2010, a lot of local development occurs. As a result, all of the water is routed under the assumption some facility will handle it. Sometimes its an issue between two counties not verifying water loads between areas. As a result, the river gets over burdened and now floods every year.
This is why the state wants to buy your house. It's their fault this idiots house floods every year. Their employees did a piss poor job of making sure water management was under control in the area. As a result, idiots that build houses too close to the water get flooded annually.
Your close, but not quite.
In recorded history, there is only 4 floods that would have ever threatened the basement of the home. When they built the house in 75, there had been one flood at 36 ft in 1969. The was easily defendable with the planter system that was built into the house by the original owner/builder of the house. No one could really have seen 4 record floods happening in the future. We bought the house for about 60 percent of what it was worth after the 1997 flood(the flood that was supposed to be the end all be all of floods....) we then made a bigger better dike to protect ourselves from larger floods than anyone saw coming, so we would be ready. We now own a home on a very nice lot, with a great view for about 130,000 when the original asking price was more like 250,000/ We realize that living on the river comes with some responsabilities and my father was ready to take on those responsabilities. The city, however, cannot "take a chance" on home owners to save the rest of the town, so they waste hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on temporary protection from these houses. We didn't ask the city to make a dike on the wrong side of our house, they did that for themselves. Just yesterday, we had 3 fireman, 3 police officers, and 2 city engineers looking at our dike for like 4 hours deciding if it was "good enough". You know how many tax dollars are wasted paying these people to be out here? Not to mention how much it costs the city to provide sandbags, sand and clay, along with the cost of insuring all of the volunteers to help with laying bags, and the cost of transportation.... it is an insane cost. the city would much rather buy 3 houses and create a permanent dike, and add it to the "1 less thing to worry about" list. We didn't do anything wrong buy buying a house on the river. The city would save money overall by buying our house, and each house on either side of us, and building permanent flood protection for the rest of the neighborhood/town. Does anyone get it yet? We don't think it is necessary to sell to the city. we didnt BEG the city to buy our house, They asked us to buy our house, so why the fuck would we sell it for pennies on the dollar? Also, the houses that Moorhead has already bought out have been sold to a house moving company. They sell the houses to starter families based on income... So they are doing somehting good with them, and not losing 100 percent of the money that they buy the houses with. This also will bring up the value of the rest of the property in the neighborhood, making the property taxes higher, and creating more income for the city.
Also, prior to 1999 when we moved in, it flooded once in the 25 years the house had been there, and this is the first ever year we have had back to back flooding.