Brian Keeper remembers the year he and his seven siblings helped their father build a one-bedroom summer house along the river. It was 1975, and the Texas Longhorns were on their way to winning the national collegiate baseball and football championships. Keeper was 18.

Now, Keeper and his siblings face the hard reality of rebuilding their family home. The house wasn’t just one important part of Brian’s life — in many ways it was his life, the place where he’d spent summers growing into adulthood, where he’d moved in 2011 to take care of his father before he died. He’d assumed he’d stay on to care for the house until his own time came. Suddenly, at 68, Keeper’s future is more uncertain than he ever expected. He could rebuild, or he could wait for someone to make him an offer to take the property off his hands — maybe even the county, if officials decide to buy out homes along the river to protect communities from future flooding.

Keeper is not alone in this situation. More than 2,000 structures were damaged by the July 4 floods in Kerr County, which suffered the brunt of the floods that devastated the Texas Hill Country, killing at least 138 people and causing an estimated $1.1 billion in damage. For inland counties like Kerr, where only about 2 percent of homeowners have flood insurance, navigating the piecemeal support offered by an array of public and private entities after the floods adds endless complexity to residents’ hard choices. Those who choose to stay must ensure their next home can withstand flooding of uncertain severity in the future. As the warming waters of the Gulf load the storms that move over Texas with ever more moisture, fewer guarantees can be assumed than in the past.

As residents begin to rebuild, county officials are trying to avoid costly missteps — like permitting rebuilding in flood zones without enforcing elevation requirements — that have set back recovery in other flood-prone regions in the country. In Fort Myers, Florida, residents rebuilt in high-risk areas after Hurricane Ian in 2022. Last year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency found the county in violation of federal guidelines and revoked its access to subsidized flood insurance. Rates were projected to rise 25 percent, and more than 250 structures that were built in risky areas were required to be moved or demolished.

The vast majority of homes in Kerr were built decades before the county issued a rule requiring that new construction in floodplains be built at least a foot above flood levels as determined by engineering assessments based on FEMA data. As the structures are rebuilt, homeowners like Keeper will need to bring them up to code, adding cost and complexity to an already difficult process.