I would agree if in fact the insurance rates followed suit. In none of these stories is it clear that putting your house on stilts would waive the insurance increases.

Not sure about these increases, but livable structure below the 100 year flood line will trigger a huge insurance increase. Fully elevated homes are done that way because otherwise insurance costs would be prohibitive. Other building methods and materials (like HardiPlank) also cut insurance costs.

Do you mean this?

https://www.jameshardie.com/products/hardieplank-lap-siding

I don't see how this adds structural support.

Properly installed HardiePlank and similiar siding is substantialy more durable than vinyl siding. Brick, stone, and other siding can be even stronger.

Ah, okay, brick is the standard in my area so I was confused.

It's not structural but durability. It's effectively concrete siding and holds up well.

Aren't stilts actually worse for a direct hurricane hit? They are great for flooding but terrible for hurricanes.

Some kind of underground waterproof bunker is probably the safest, but not sure those are going to be real popular.

(I meant that more as an example to follow OP's comment. I'm sure it would have to do with roofing material and other things structural in a hurricane zone.)

I think the concept is to build houses resilient enough to avoid storm and flood insurance altogether.

Plenty of communities have houses built on stilts for all kinds of reasons (10 foot snowdrifts is another reason)

the problem with large corp failures are it's not the execs that get left holding the bag. investors, consumers, employees, community do.

to me the easiest way to fix that is don't let companies get to big to fail.

Suppose to. But USA isn't exactly practicising free market. Coming back from doing business in China, their market is truly competitive and free as long as you factor out some specific "Government guanxi thing" and "central government policy" (e.g. clamping down on private tuition and enrichment classes). Their EVs have no restriction like in USA where Tesla cannot sell in some region because of existing car dealership. Insurance too are consider "costless" to high risk group and must never deny pre-existing. All this extra government intervention in USA really not helping "free market". In USA the last 3 presidents, things get so anti-competitive and almost like centralized planning to some extend (solyndra) especially Bush-Obama time. The only unrestricted "free market" now is people. You see that Cali moving to Texas over the last decade. Expect similar things to happen to Florida as well in this decade.