What is the name of the act of the U.S. Congress that created the National Flood Insurance Program?

The National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 is the act of Congress that created the National Flood Insurance Program.

The law was enacted as Title XIII of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 and signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It responded to growing concern that private insurers generally could not offer affordable flood coverage for catastrophic losses, especially after major disasters such as Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and severe flooding in other parts of the country.

The NFIP had two linked goals: provide federally backed flood insurance and reduce future flood damage through floodplain management. Participating communities must adopt and enforce minimum land-use and building standards, connecting insurance availability with efforts to limit risky development.

Several similarly named laws are easy to confuse. The Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973 later required flood insurance for certain federally backed loans in high-risk areas. The National Flood Insurance Reform Act of 1994 and the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004 further amended the program. None of those later measures was the original law that established the NFIP.