Texas woman whose home was lost in floods says ‘none’ of her neighbors had insurance — and she’s ‘paying for it.’ Why many felt priced out of coverage

For Cynthia Thomas, a longtime resident of the Hill Country and a survivor of the Guadalupe River flooding, the disaster hit home. While she was safely in Houston celebrating the Fourth of July, her house was severely damaged. But the thought of flood insurance was never a pressing concern, but now insurance is unaffordable.

Although she told NBC News that the flood insurance quote for her neighbor was $6,000 per month, high risk areas have an annual rate of $1,021 a month.

Paying for protection

Thomas admits she’s seen flooding before, but never anything this severe. She even recalls making it through Hurricane Harvey and with resilience and perseverance, she will make it through the Guadalupe River’s devastation.

However, living a good distance from the river, and at higher elevation, she never felt the need for the extra coverage.

“Everybody knows that it doesn’t flood like that,” she told NBC News.

As she weighed her next steps to rebuild, she admitted that others in her community, including Camp Mystic, may never recover. After decades without a major flood, she said she’s simply “paying for it now.”

“I know the people who are not going to be able to rebuild,” she said. “Most of all, I’m grieving terribly about the loss of life, because some of them are friends … but I feel so blessed and lucky I was not there. Because I’m alive.”

According to Insurance.com, homeowners in Texas pay an average of $3,851 per year for home insurance — about $1,250 more than the national average. Standard home insurance typically doesn’t cover flooding, which means homeowners need a separate flood policy.