[Reporter] When Jo Garcia bought her Dove Springs home in 1994, her kids didn't even think they were in Austin anymore.

[Garcia] We used to walk the dogs in the greenbelt and see the deer.

They thought I had bought them an enchanted forest.

We miss the greenbelt.

[rushing water] [Reporter] She lost her home and nearly her life in the historic 2013 Halloween flood.

Garcia was trying to get her grandson on the roof when the truck they were climbing on was swept away.

[Garcia] We went into the water and I reached, and I felt--it was a two by four, and I thought, I'm holding on.

This is where I'm holding on.

That was the beginning of a horrible experience for us.

[Reporter] Garcia and her family survived, but their home was beyond repair.

But then came an offer from the program.

This program would buy out her home and help her cover moving expenses.

At the same time, it would bring frustration and sometimes heartbreak.

But what was this program and could Austinites needed again in the future?

[Reporter] When it comes to flooding, Jorge Morales got immediate on the job training.

[Morales] October 1998.

[thunder rumbles] [Morales] I started the week of the floods.

As an intern, I had the privilege of taking all the flood complaints and entering into the database.

[Reporter] That 1998 flood he's talking about broke records across central Texas.

Some areas got almost 30 inches of rain.

And you might be noticing a trend here.

Austin floods.

A lot.

[Morales] Austin has always had flash flooding in this area just because of the topography.

The Gulf moisture is just right for that and I think some of the most intense rainfalls in the world can be captured in Central Texas.

Oh, that's a great question.

That's a multi-part.

Question.

[Reporter] The former intern, Morales, is now the director of the Watershed Protection Department with the City of Austin.

One of their main missions is to prevent flooding, and in 1998, they partnered with the Army Corps of Engineers to study Austin's most flood prone areas.

[Morales] We start by looking for engineering solutions, and we did a floodwall.

We have the regional ponds.

We've done some other, divergent systems, but ultimately Onion Creek, such a large watershed, there was not a solution like that that we could do.

[curious music plays] [Reporter] The Onion Creek watershed near Dove Springs is massive.

Researchers at UT have called it roughly the size of Austin.

And bigger watersheds mean bigger floods.

Thus, the buyout program was started.

Its goal was to purchase homes in flood prone areas across Austin.

Onion Creek was a top priority because they were at higher risk.

The need became even more urgent after the 2013 flood decimated the neighborhood, damaging over 600 homes.

[Morales] We had identified 823 homes that were at risk, and the best way to protect those families was to relocate them out of the floodplain.

[Reporter] Morales says the buyback program worked like this: First, families had to agree to the buyout.

It's a voluntary program.

Then third party appraisers would value the home using 2012 Travis County Appraisal District figures from before the flood.

The city also would cover relocation costs.

[Morales] If the home was valued at $200,000.

But a comparable home in Austin, it's 250.

So the city will cover that 50,000 as part of the relocation benefit.

In addition to closing costs for the new home and moving costs and all that.

Sometimes we have to go update the appraisal just to make sure we're giving the fair market value at the time of the closure.

[Reporter] The goal was to enable residents to find homes comparable to the ones they lost in the flood.

And initially this worked.

According to data from the Watershed Protection Department, the average buyout and relocation package in 2014 totaled just over $172,000.

About 18 grand more than the median home sale price in Dove Springs that year.

But the affordability crisis hit Austin hard.

Housing prices skyrocketed.

The average sale price had jumped over 6% from the year before.

And Dove Springs was the more affordable part of town.

The median home price for Austin that year was roughly $295,000, a 71% increase over the average buyout.

At the same time, not enough affordable housing was being added to the market.

According to the Texas A&M Real Estate Center, the Housing Affordability Index dropped in Austin every year from 2012 to 2018.

All this added up to flood victims trying to navigate a housing market desert.

[Seong] For the lower income residents, especially for the residents who affected by the 2013 flood flood, I guess the home price is still a big hurdle for them.

[Reporter] Kijin Seong is a researcher at the Urban Information Lab at the University of Texas.

She researched the flood buyout program in the Onion Creek area.

Her research shows that even with the buyout money and the relocation funds, lower income residents still had a harder time affording a new home.

[Seong] Their median household income values were, relatively lower than the average Austinite median household income.

Even though the city of Austin offered the buyout prices, that is not much cheaper than the new homes for them.

[Reporter] Seong says of the 176 buyout participants they sampled, about half of them moved out of Austin.

One of the people that left Austin-- [Garcia] Just love this picture.

[Reporter] - -was Jo.

[Garcia] We found a house in Buda.

I couldn't afford to find something like what we have now in Austin.

Just no way.

[Reporter] For many families, the process was difficult.

[Garcia] One of the reasons why I've been, vocal about this is because I felt like I was blamed, you know, for living there.

It's like, well, you knew you were in a flood area.

[Reporter] Not all residents had flood insurance.

And even those like Garcia who did, it didn't cover damage to her belongings.

And homeowners may have even fewer options in the future.

New research shows a tight correlation between climate disasters and insurance cost hikes.

Some insurance companies will no longer cover homes in disaster prone areas.

Morales says the buyout program wrapped in 2017, but concerns over flooding remain.

[thunder rumbles] New storm data analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, shows that rainfall has intensified and floodplains are actually larger in some areas than previously thought, and that's only expected to grow.

[Morales] As we know, climate's been changing and the intensity of the rainfalls have been intensifying as well.

We just saw this year in Asheville and other cities that weren't expecting that kind of rain.

They got it with the hurricanes.

And so we have to prepare for that.

[Reporter] While new floodplain maps are being prepared with the updated rainfall data, Morales encourages people to get flood insurance even if they're not required to.

It remains to be seen whether more buyouts are in Austin's future.

[Garcia] So I planted two trees in the back already.

[Reporter] Garcia doesn't live in the floodplain anymore, but she misses her old neighborhood.

And while her old green belt is gone, she is putting down roots here.

[Garcia] I'm working on making our neighborhood.

You know what we want it to be.