I would like to add a little more info about FEMA funds, though I realize that SBM was just using it as an illustrative example.Here is the main point I want to make:
FEMA actually DOES pay more to the indigent in certain situations, so there are "levels" based on income. How do I know?
I lost my home in 2003 due to repeated flooding in the previous 5 years. So much new construction was going in immediately upstream of my subdivision, which had not flooded once in its first 20 years, that the county flood commission gave up and said they could not (were not going to try to)control the flooding in my neighborhood any more. (Who was paying them off to allow such rapid development - another story.)
After TS Allison in 2001, the FEMA inspector sat down with us and due to our middle-class income, we were not entitled to a lot of the benefits he was commissioned to hand out.
In the end, our house was purchased by the county with FEMA funds at about 20% below fair market value, and demolished (with ~50 others) to be left as county greenspace.
Too bad, it was a great house, great neighborhood, and we weren't ready to move. I contracted lyme during the Allison flood cleanup. Ticks all over the yard.
There was another flood between Allison and the buyout. By buyout time we'd been living out of stacks of boxes on the upper floor for about 2 years. I messed up my back as a result, and had to have surgery #1 in 2003. #2 will be this year.
So FEMA was a real mixed bag for us. Because of their stipulations we had to buy a new home within a very tight timeframe. We had to close on the new house 1 week after my back surgery (I was not supposed to get out of bed), and had be out of the old house a month later.