Dear FEMA, This means WAR.

I'm purely venting. Feel free to have a pity party with me if you'd like.

Our neighbors gave us a heads up about this a few months ago, and today the letter came in the mail from our mortgage company.  Someone at FEMA decided to look at the map and redraw the floodplain lines - and move our homes from not just being in a 'no flood plain', but all the way up to being in a HIGH risk flood plain! So now, we are being required to pay FEMA what looks like possibly an extra $150-$200 a MONTH for flood insurance!! and did you know - FEMA draws the flood line and you can only get flood insurance through FEMA? How convenient for them!

The thing is...I am 99.9% convinced our home will NEVER flood!  We had our land surveyed a year ago for another reason, so I called the surveyor.  He said that 100s of homes in our community have just been 'added' to a high risk flood plain - and of all the homes he's surveyed - none of them have been in the required flood elevation - they are all ABOVE it.  So, now we get to pay him a few hundred dollars - and hopefully he can prove that we are above flood elevation. Then we have to submit paper work to FEMA to get an exemption of sorts, then we have to submit paperwork to our mortgage company proving all of this. But you can be sure, we'll do all we can to not be fleeced by FEMA, because that is exactly what feels like is happening.

It's so frustrating...we would have NEVER bought a house in a flood plain. And adding an extra $150-$200 a month to our mortgage would certainly have been taken into consideration BEFORE we bought it. And now we're stuck. And it feels so very unfair. so.very.unfair.