HUD Disproportionately Sells Homes in Flood Zones: NPR

Originally published on September 13, 2021, by Huo Jingnan, Rebecca Hersher, Tegan Wendland, Steve Newborn and Daniel Rivero for NPR.

The first thing Larry McCanney fell in love with was the tree in the front yard. It cast shade on the porch of a house that, if he were honest, needed some work. But McCanney is handy, the price was right and the location was perfect, just a couple of miles from his childhood home in Burlington, N.J.

"We just kind of wanted to get our family started, and it was affordable for us," McCanney says. "I'm still paying college loans off 11 years later, [and] we wanted to ensure that we were purchasing a place that, should I lose my job or if [my wife] lost her job, we wouldn't be out of a house in two months' time."

There was one unexpected thing about the house: The seller was listed as the secretary of housing and urban development.

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