Hurricane Ian battered these middle-class beach communities. Repair costs finished them off.
Hurricane Ian’s assault on southwest Florida last fall is speeding a transition already occurring in some of the state’s coastal communities — driving out middle- and working-class people and replacing them with deep-pocketed buyers.
In the waterfront cities of Fort Myers Beach and Cape Coral, even homeowners with flood insurance are finding they often cannot afford the costs of rebuilding their houses to modern building codes, as federal rules demand. Instead, many ended up selling their properties as vacant land, according to real estate transaction data shared with POLITICO.
People fleeing the communities where Ian made landfall include workers and retirees who had bought their homes deca...
