Plus, how do you codify a house able to withstand a high tide 12 feet above normal?
You don't. You just expect it to be washed away, and you don't expect help. And anyone who expects to be able to depend on you in situations with heavy weather is a tool who deserves to fail. We keep propping up idiots and we wonder why the world keeps looking more and more like Idiocracy. Nobody but farmers should be living on a flood plain, and we should be farming it. Nothing but disposable (and once fallen, biodegradable) summer homes should be built on the beach. No flammable structures should be built in wildfire zones. No fragile structures in common quake zones. Yet we still have all of that. Yes, even that last one, California is still building shit-shacks made of nothing. They might not fall down in a quake, but they will slop themselves apart, and they're highly flammable even though this is wildfire country.
In short, we are not even using the most basic common sense when siting and building. It's all for profit, and there is no sense to the system whatsoever. In fact, people who try to do the right thing are usually hampered so as to continue to produce more business for the system, ye olde broken window fallacy in action.