Rocking on his front porch overlooking the Mississippi Sound, former Gulfport Mayor Billy Hewes questions how anyone wouldn’t want to live there.

“People are always going to gravitate to the water,” he said. “And we have a beautiful waterfront.”

But it was far from certain that people would return after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which killed 238 people in Mississippi and left only concrete slabs in many areas. With beachfront rebuilding crawling along more than a decade later, Gulfport began offering property tax breaks to those who built near the water. Hewes said the goal was for people to “build back better, quicker, help kick-start the economy.”

Where to encourage building is a thorny decision for local governments in areas exposed to floods or wildfires. Despite risks including rising sea levels, places need residents and taxpayers. Like other Gulf Coast cities after Katrina, Gulfport required residents to build at higher elevations and enforced a stronger building code. But most residents near the water are in at least a moderate-risk flood zone. Nationwide, many more homes are being built in flood zones than are being removed.

"My fear is that when the next storm like Katrina comes along, it is going to be even worse, and a lot of — a lot of it will be shame on us because there were things we could have done better," said Katherine Egland, a Gulfport resident who chairs the NAACP's national Environmental and Climate Justice Committee.

Allen Baker, whose beach-front was completely destroyed during Katrina, said he benefitted from the tax incentive and built a stronger home he hopes will withstand the next big storm.

"The storms that blow in off of the gulf are not going to get any less powerful or less frequent. It's just something we have to deal with, and we have to deal with it smart," Baker said.

AP Video by Sophie Bates