A Climate Crisis Americans May Understand: NorCal Insurance Doubling, Tripling, Dropped After Fires

[hatrack]

Last edited Wed Aug 7, 2019, 10:36 AM - Edit history (1)

Jennifer Burt knows she lives in a fire-prone community. That’s why she’s done everything she can to fire-proof her home in Meadow Vista, in the bushy, densely wooded Placer County foothills, even installing a sprinkler system on the roof. Yet a few weeks ago, her insurance carrier — Lloyd’s of London, known for insuring high-risk properties — told her it was declining to renew her homeowners’ policy. Lloyd’s also dropped coverage on two rental properties Burt owns in Graeagle, a heavily forested community northwest of Truckee.

Burt was already paying a lot for insurance — $6,300 a year for the three homes — and now fears that her premiums could double or triple as she shops for replacement coverage. Rising premiums are also hurting her livelihood as a real estate agent: Burt lost a sale in Colfax recently because the buyers couldn’t find insurance for less than $6,900, and their lender backed out of the deal. “It prevented them from purchasing a home in California,” Burt said. “I get so frustrated that the insurance commissioner won’t do anything. It’s reaching a point where it’s a daily conversation in my office as to whether insurance rates are going to kill real estate in California.”

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Allstate Insurance Group, the state’s sixth-largest seller of homeowners’ coverage, announced in December that it has cut its California homeowners’ business in half over the past decade. The insurer reported $529 million in losses from last fall’s Camp Fire and the Southern California Woolsey Fire.

Sacramento insurance lobbyist Rex Frazier said it’s little wonder that carriers are backing away. Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, said insurance companies have been subjected to “a decade of price suppression” that’s left them unable to fully recoup the cost of doing business in the fire-prone state. “Is this really the time that a bunch of companies are going to rush into high-risk fire areas?” he said.

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https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article232575652.html

[Boomer]

1. Talk about denial

People want to continue their normal lives, with a future that looks like the past. They don't grasp just how different the next few decades will be.