as extreme weather events become more frequent two of New Jersey's veteran federal leaders are calling on Congress to pass flood insurance reforms by re-upping the national flood insurance program for another five years bringing with it a number of other changes to bring down costs and make for a fairer claims process those are two items that homeowners for years have said are barriers to getting the coverage they need Melissa Rose Cooper reports we can't afford to be unprepared when it comes to people's homes and businesses anymore after all a home is often the single greatest asset that any new jerseyan will own yet Senator Bob menenda says many residents across New Jersey are in danger of having their greatest wealth Builder washed away by flooding that's why the senator and representative Frank pallone are taking steps to protect homeowners as well as small business owners by introducing the national flood insurance program reauthorization act our national flood insurance program reauthorization Bill implements the lessons that we learned after superstorm standing it makes sweeping reforms to make the programs more sustainable affordable fair and efficient it makes premiums more affordable so that we can grow the program get more people to use the national flood insurance program last fall FEMA updated flood risk assessments under what's known as risk rating 2.0 FEMA has said that the change would cause about two-thirds of policyholders in New Jersey to have their premiums increase less than ten dollars a month and that 20 percent of policies would actually see a decrease but lawmakers point out that those increases have been enough to cause about 12 000 new jerseyans and even more people Nationwide to drop their flood insurance and so one of the things that we do is to say it is probably the most important one is that we say that the most you can have is an annual rate increase of nine percent to keep the program affordable for homeowners about a hundred thousand people dropped the flood insurance this program in the last year once risk 2.0 went into effect because of the increased closer premiums and we estimate at least that many each year if we don't do something to change it we'll drop the insurance this legislation will help stabilize our real estate markets especially in flood vulnerable areas and it will help reduce costs in communities like these we applaud any effort to further reduce Financial barriers to home ownership the program also a process of filing claim thing ortley Beach resident Paul Jeffrey says was challenging after Sandy there were multiple overlapping programs that were complicated they were hard to understand no one could understand them and the result of that is a disaster and that's the reason we end up with a bunch of callbacks people didn't even know that if they filed for this and filed for that here five years later they'd come back and say oh this was duplication of benefits yours thirty thousand dollars back that's got to stop we've got to simplify the process so that can't happen again and the congressman saying the flood insurance program is a critical step especially as new jerseyans continue to deal with the effects of inflation and climate change especially in light of the fact that we used to talk about a hundred year floods as if that was an accurate description because of climate change though we're seeing what we thought were once 100 years floods of more and more frequently in some cases we've seen them in consecutive years or more often even in places that haven't had a history of flooding the flood insurance program would also include a 90-day grace period for policyholders who may not be able to make the initial payments as well as vouchers for low-income families to help subsidize their costs for NJ Spotlight News I'm Melissa Rose Cooper [Music] [Music]