Climate Crisis Makes It Impossible For Some US Residents To Get Home Insurance (theguardian.com) 226
An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from the Guardian's Arwa Mahdawi: Insurance company documents aren't exactly renowned for being riveting reading. This week, however, State Farm, the largest insurance firm in the US by premium volume, came out with an eyeball-grabbing update: it has stopped accepting new homeowner insurance applications in California. In a statement, the company said the decision was based on the heightened risk of natural disasters, such as wildfires, along with historic increases in construction costs.
This news didn't come out of nowhere. Last year, two large insurance firms in California ended their coverage for some multimillion-dollar houses in wildfire-prone areas. "We cannot charge an adequate price for the risk," one insurance company CEO explained in an earnings call. But the scope of this announcement seems unprecedented. The US's biggest insurer halting new policies in the US's most populous state? A state with a population of nearly 40 million suddenly having its home insurance options curtailed because insurance companies know that extreme weather is only getting worse and more expensive?
If this doesn't serve as a wake-up call about the climate crisis, I don't know what will. Melting ice caps may be abstract enough to ignore, but plummeting house prices have a way of getting people's attention. House prices haven't plummeted yet, of course. Quite the opposite: California is an incredibly expensive place to live. But if you can't get insurance, it's almost impossible to get a mortgage. This makes it harder to sell your house and will make prices go down. The writing is on the wall, as insurance companies are well aware.
This news didn't come out of nowhere. Last year, two large insurance firms in California ended their coverage for some multimillion-dollar houses in wildfire-prone areas. "We cannot charge an adequate price for the risk," one insurance company CEO explained in an earnings call. But the scope of this announcement seems unprecedented. The US's biggest insurer halting new policies in the US's most populous state? A state with a population of nearly 40 million suddenly having its home insurance options curtailed because insurance companies know that extreme weather is only getting worse and more expensive?
If this doesn't serve as a wake-up call about the climate crisis, I don't know what will. Melting ice caps may be abstract enough to ignore, but plummeting house prices have a way of getting people's attention. House prices haven't plummeted yet, of course. Quite the opposite: California is an incredibly expensive place to live. But if you can't get insurance, it's almost impossible to get a mortgage. This makes it harder to sell your house and will make prices go down. The writing is on the wall, as insurance companies are well aware.
wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs rise (Score:2)
The statement by State Farm doesn't mention climate at all, though it does look like there's a link between climate and wildfires. According to the California Climate Change Assessment [ca.gov] of 2019:
By 2100, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, one study found that the frequency of extreme wildfires would increase, and the average area burned statewide would increase by 77 percent. In the areas that have the highest fire risk, wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs rise by 18 percent by 2055.
A Fou
Re:wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs ri (Score:5, Informative)
it does look like there's a link between climate and wildfire
Productive growing seasons are followed a few years later by wildfire. The increase in understory growth provides more fuel. The Native Americans knew this and started their own brush fires to clear that growth out.
Re:wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs ri (Score:5, Interesting)
The state put up a fund to entice them back and they are coming back.
ANY Place in the US, that has high risk for some sort of disaster can face this...insurance is a business.
Could climate be playing a part in this?
Possibly.
Right now, hurricanes at least....seem really not to be outside of norms for the gulf coast. They suck, but that's part of life down here.
The east coast is at risk for them too...part of nature, just risk of earthquakes and fires out west, and floods in the middle of the US around the MS river.
Everywhere on earth has risks....
Anyway, the insurance thing shouldn't really shock anyone. It isn't like this is the first time a company has pulled out of an area they deemed too much a risk to be un-profitable.
Re:wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs ri (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a part of the answer lies in the phrase "increased construction costs". This means that if a policy is written to provide "replacement costs", the cost of fulfilling it can increase dramatically. So it's not JUST the increased risk, it's also the cost of living up to the policy.
Re: wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs r (Score:2)
I'd mod this up if I had points. California wildfires are nothing new. Period. Higher construction costs in this state are the only thing that actually makes any sense. Combine that with the high incidence of natural disasters compared to most states, and you have your answer. Wealthier Californians that live very close to the coast already get free taxpayer funded flood insurance. Not that they can't afford it, but that's par for the course of the shitty politics in this state.
I mean FFS
https://www.theguar [theguardian.com]
Re: wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs (Score:2)
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In earthquake zones, sticks are better than stones.
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All over the world, concrete and masonry is how you build homes
This baffled me when I moved from South Florida to the Gulf Coast of Texas back in the late '90s. Down in Florida, the homes were built as you describe. They were veritable bunkers. Cinderblock walls with concrete and rebar as reinforcement. Hurricane straps to keep the roof from flying away. Windows that could take direct impacts from lumber at hurricane wind speeds (i.e. 75+ mph). All of that was (or was about to be) part of the building code. Unless a Cat 4 or higher was bearing right down on us we didn'
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I agreewholeheartedly with the notion of avoiding subsidies or handouts to make things work. The government generally shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers. Where I differ is this part:
I don't think the government should come tell individuals what they can do on their own private property in order to save us all from ourselves.
Perhaps it's because I grew up in a hurricane zone, but I don't see it as the government saving people from themselves: I see it as the government saving people from their neighbors. A house that wasn't built to code was shrapnel in an environment like that. There's a reason I mentioned that windows in So
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Yes this. AND if we had listened to the Native Americans, we would have never built cities in deserts to begin with.
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...or probably no cities at all in the lands habited by Native Americans...
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Which Native American said to never build a city in the desert? Was it one of the ones living in a village... in the desert?
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Cliff dwellers.
https://www.nps.gov/meve/learn... [nps.gov]
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Well if we had listened to the Native Americans, the US would probably be a very narrow nation along the east coast of North America.
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There's also an important complex link between climate change causing more wildfires due to dry conditions and stronger winds, and the increasing expense of rebuilding in California, and the fact that when a wildfire gets out of control it wipes out tens if not hundreds of customers at once; all of which combines into a nationwide insurance company not wanting to sign up for basically guaranteed financial loss at some point in the actuarial tables they are looking at.
Oregon and Washington still have the sam
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Oregon and Washington still have the same elevated risks of wildfire, if not more. And yet, State Farm is still happy to take new business there. So I'm wondering what the X-factor was here...
Stronger anti-discrimination laws, maybe?
ORS 746.015(1): No person shall make or permit any unfair discrimination between individuals of the same class and equal expectation of life, or between risks of essentially the same degree of hazard, in the availability of insurance, in the application of rates for insurance, in the dividends or other benefits payable under insurance policies, or in any other terms or conditions of insurance policies.
RCW 48.18.480: No insurer shall make or permit any unfair discr
Re: wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs r (Score:4, Informative)
Re: wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs r (Score:4, Informative)
Actually it's because California has a law against rate hikes. In other states they can just jack up the prices to compensate.
The law requires approval from the state. It doesn't prevent rate hikes when they are reasonable. Washington and Oregon both have similar laws requiring approval. There may be differences where certain types of hike don't have to be pre-approved, but that explanation seems like a stretch to me. I'd be more likely to believe that they are going to do the same in other states, but just haven't done it yet.
Re: wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs r (Score:2)
Climate likely plays a significant role, but the reality is that it's our approach to building, inflation, and fire management that are the bigger culprits. We continue to cut down forest and build houses in the middle. Home prices continue to rise. And homeowners continue to fight against controlled burning.
If the natives were managing this, insurance wouldn't be in crisis.
While... (Score:5, Insightful)
People are building homes in places that were prone to disaster, and are no, and probably always will be.
Those mega-houses in Cali are built where the chance of large fires are simply going to happen. And those houses are simply going to burn. It is as close to 100 percent probable as you can get.
It's the same as building a house in a Miami suburb, and expecting to get flood insurance.
Want to get your new house insured? Build it in a place where it isn't a sure bet it will get destroyed by the normal conditions.
Factors (Score:5, Interesting)
Agree 100% There are dozens of other factors beyond climate change that factor into risk. One is that California has been lagging in it's use of controlled burns to reduce the size of wildfires for a variety of reasons. They passed a law a couple of years ago to cut some red tape and increase the number of burns, but they are *far* behind the curve.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31... [npr.org]
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All this annoys me. Are people who own forested lands really paying their fair share of the costs of firefighting? Keeping in mind they own, in many cases, hundreds of times the acreage of a typical homeowner? But god forb
Re:While... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would posit that there's not a place on the face of the earth that isn't at risk for some sort of natural disaster.
In the US, out west, you have fires and earthquakes...in the midwest...floods from rivers...gulf coast and east coast, hurricanes...and actually in the middle of the US, there's risks for some pretty bad earthquakes, they just haven't hit yet, but there is some plate pressure our there just waiting.
It's called life. Life is not without risk....ever.
So, live with whatever risk is in your area and be prepared. If you don't like it there or can't live with the risk there, the one really WONDERFUL thing about our country, the US, it is very diverse in terrain and climate and large.
Move somewhere else.
Some noise about 'adequate premium' (Score:3)
I'd be interested in whether California is limiting somehow the premiums they can charge for homeowners' insurance.
The situation was somewhat different, but many auto insurers refused to write policies in NJ - mainly because of significant fraud associated with residence of NYC and to a lesser degree Philadelphia misrepresenting their addresses to get cheaper insurance, and also attempts by the NJ government to limit premiums.
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collusion (Score:2)
Re:Some noise about 'adequate premium' (Score:5, Informative)
State Farm is a mutual insurance company, owned by the policy holders. The "enormous profit margins" you are claiming just do not exist. Ideally they would break even every year as that would mean the premiums are as low as they can be to meet the payouts. In reality, some years they have a little excess (in 2022 they had an underwriting gain of $849M on premiums of $27.6B), and in some years there is a shortage (2021 had a shortfall if $1.1B).
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I live in California. Last year, Safeco gave me a "notice of nonrenewal" on my homeowner's insurance. They redlined our whole area. I went to Farmer's insurance and got a policy right away. However this year, my insurance rate increased by 81% (no kidding). I now pay $3,400/year for homeowner's insurance. CalFire remapped our area and almost the entire county (and it's a very large county going to the middle of Lake Tahoe) is in the "moderate" fire danger area.
Our only recourse is the California "FAIR
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People are building homes in places that were prone to disaster, and are no, and probably always will be
We don't subsidize fires. That's your difference. We've got flood insurance that American tax dollars help to defer. We've got hurricane programs that help make insurance affordable. There's tons of ways American tax dollars go to fund a whole slew of kinds of insurance. But we don't have fire. The insurance companies are seeing major money losses on wildfires, so they're obviously going to ditch that since there's no profit to be had in it.
That's why those other places are still getting insurance. Y
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Want to get your new house insured? Build it in a place where it isn't a sure bet it will get destroyed by the normal conditions.
Or, conversely, build an appropriate structure for the environment. A great example of this is hurricane Ian and it wiping out some barrier islands like Sanibel and Fort Myers Beach. New housing code is construction atop 17’ pylons above the high tide mark, hurricane proof windows roofs and siding, as well as extra bracing internal to the structure to handle the loads. When the surge came over the island, those structures were largely intact (well except for the ground level where you’re not
It really is not (Score:2)
Re:While... (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't seem like an insolvable problem.
Right now, I'm on track to build what is known as a barndominium. It is a steel-shell structure anchored in concrete, and inside of which is built living space. It stands up to tornadoes of F4 or less, and ignores termites. And since the exterior is metal and maybe some stone or brick facing, is not going to explode into flame when visited by airborne hot coals from a nearby wildfire. That, coupled with sawing down everything that is remotely green for about 100 yards to keep radiant heat from being enough to damage the structure should make a home suitable for California. Why not build for the prevailing situation and build a "barndo?" It could make California real estate as useful again as it is in other areas of the country.
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, blaming this on AGW is pretty specious.
This is insurance risk modelling. No "blaming" involved. You are confusing this with politics. Also note that the insurer does not even reference AGW. What they say is " historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market". Of course, there really is no other explanation than AGW for the " rapidly growing catastrophe exposure" and it is exactly what has been predicted as early AGW impact for something like 40 years now: Cli
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Of course, there really is no other explanation than AGW for the " rapidly growing catastrophe exposure"
No, there is. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think AGW is a factor, but the state had reduced its controlled burns. There were staffing concerns, among others.
A lot of parts of the state really never got adequate controlled burns, either, and now that's resulted in hazardous fuel loads. Specifically there's a lot of "ladder" material that will allow fire to reach canopies that has built up. This is a problem that just tends to get worse and worse with time until you have a fire...
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It's about replacement costs.
State Farm will happily insure your brand new million-dollar log cabin in the woods in Oregon or Washington, because the financial risk is still below whatever threshold they decided to draw the line at. I don't think they have a good probability on that in California any more, combined with an out-of-control wildfire in California just burning down more homes per event due to increased density - thus more claims per wildfire that they have to pay out, at higher demolition and
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Funny you should mention Miami. Homeowner's insurance in Florida is four times the national average [cnn.com], and going higher. One reason cited is climate change.
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There was no sudden increase in wildfires though. There was an increase in neighborhood-destroying wildfires because they started building neighborhoods where wildfires were common.
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Total acres being affected by wildfires has been going up. It isn't just the property damage increasing, it is both.
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That is extremely unlikely. Also note that insurances are, by regulation, not allowed to lie about their reasons here and that their risk calculations get audited. What they said was that they would have to ask for a too high premium for it to still be a viable insurance product. And that is what happened. And that is what they will have detailed models proving it.
There is a little more to it ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the reason SF is pulling out of California is because they are denied increasing rates to reflect the new statistical risks of loss.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/s... [wsj.com] - note this is an opinion piece.
"Yet state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara won’t let insurers raise premiums to account for increasing wildfire risks. California is the only state that requires insurers to set premiums based on historical experience."
Re:There is a little more to it ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed - it's not that they won't insure because of climate risk: they won't insure because "they cannot charge an appropriate premium to cover the risk."
This is wholly a regulatory issue - the only way you "cannot" charge an appropriate premium is if the law forbids it.
The headline also belies the changing mindset of the generations - why is it "impossible" to be insured? If nobody else is willing to insure you, sounds like an opportunity. What's stopping you from forming your own insurance company? The answers are only "lack of will" or, again, regulation.
Note this is a different question from "is the price you'd need to cover the risk, worth the price"? At some point paying the insurance premium isn't worth it. Like if you had to pay 10% of your home value every year in insurance, you'd likely just eat the risk and not pay insurance - especially on a $1M home; not many people could afford $100k/year just in insurance premiums - that's enough to buy a house in some other location.
Re:There is a little more to it ... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is wholly a regulatory issue - the only way you "cannot" charge an appropriate premium is if the law forbids it.
Its CA so the answer is yes its almost certainly a regulatory issue however...Insurance of this nature is not so simple.
Suppose the fire risk is such that on average every 5 years there will be a fire so intense that properties effected will experience a total loss of appraised/insured value. You might think well okay so the premium needs to be just a little north of 20% a year. That would be true if the risk pool was infinitely large. Accept this is not true some of these properties would be insured for a very large amount.
At a premium of 20% there is a good chance you won't get a lot of takers, especially in this economic class where 'self insuring' might be an acceptable option for them, risk the loss but keep the risk premium if it does not happen..
So here you are as the insurance company with a handful of customers. If the fire happens in the first couple years you take a loss AND you don't have much in the way of offsetting premiums from other similar high risk clients that were perhaps unaffected to fill in the revenue / cash balance hole. Even if you are not bankrupted, you are just pulling capital out of your other business lines in lower risks classes and other regions. Finally even though the premiums are large there are few of them, in the scheme of things its not a big book of business - so from a business perspective we land on 'why bother' for a company like State Farm the entire prospect represents not a lot of revenue and lots corner cases, special handling and additional complexity beyond their usual market.
Its not surprising at all their conclusion is they should just beg off, and leave that market either unmet or given over to some company that specialized in hi-risk bespoke policies, which exist like Llyods.
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What tends to happen is people buy a home with insurance they can afford, and then something happens that dramatically increases the insurance cost.
It's happened many times in the UK, where botched flood defences and the changing flow of water has caused flooding in areas that didn't previously get it. The insurance pays out the first time, but after that the premiums are unaffordable and the houses unsellable.
At least with flooding you might be able to make your house flood-proof, although your car is prob
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The headline also belies the changing mindset of the generations - why is it "impossible" to be insured? If nobody else is willing to insure you, sounds like an opportunity. What's stopping you from forming your own insurance company? The answers are only "lack of will" or, again, regulation.
An insurance company is a massive capital venture. You or I literally could not start one, because we do not have the connections or the reputation to get the funding.
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Before last Thanksgiving I had the option to essentially hal
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https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/01... [cnn.com]
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What is interesting is that apparently California is denying climate change because they won't allow changes to premiums to reflect the change in reality.
Also the other REAL: problem is the cost of reconstruction is skyrocketing. If I have to insure you for the loss of the house the premium has to be larger than:
Cost to rebuild x chance that it needs replacement
So not only is the chance to need replacement going up, but the cost to replace is skyrocketing as well. The second one is fully under california
inadequate fire mitigation strategies (Score:4, Insightful)
"40 million suddenly having its home insurance options curtailed because insurance companies know that extreme weather is only getting worse and more expensive?"
Another interpretation is home insurance options curtailed because the State does not have adequate fire mitigation strategies which have resulted in massive uncontrolled fires (8500 in 2018 alone) and damages exceeding $100 billion dollars...
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Canada is having record wildfires right now. Australia has recently had them. Has government all over the world suddenly become worse at fire management? No.
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Well, sure, you can always imagine an alternative explanation for anything. And if you don't look into the data, or cherry pick outliers when you should be looking at the whole picture, you can make that explanation look good. That explains the lion's share of Internet climate hot takes.
Real world disasters are always complex sitautions to which human behavior *always* contributes. So you could say that *a* cause of the Pompeii disaster was people building their town underneath a dorman volcano. That do
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Poor forest management plays a small role
Most of these fires - particularly in southern California - are nowhere near a "forest"
Nothing to do with climate change (Score:2, Insightful)
Really, this has nothing to do with climate change. It has to do with homeowners building in stupid places. California has always had wildfires - that's part of nature there. If you build your house where it may be next to a wildfire, it's no different that the people who insist on building in flood zones.
Land mismanagement is, of course, part of the problem. If you want to keep wildfires down, you don't put them out. Instead, you light them yourself, frequently. Better a bunch of small, controlled burns
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The other alternative is we do an actually eco/social conscious thing. We could buy out the owners of the lease high fire-risk forested coastal regions and make them wilderness areas. - IE no buildings, no motor vehicles, just pedestrian trails, bike trails (unpaved like for mountain bikes) and disperse camping allowed.
Nature gets space with low human impact. The public gets a place to hike, bike, swim, camp, photo safari, etc.
When it burns well that is part of the natural order of things and new growth w
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Really, this has nothing to do with climate change. It has to do with homeowners building in stupid places.
Less than a fifth of homes are custom built. Most people are moving to where the jobs and homes are, and buying a home built on spec.
In the case of State Farm, it's worth noting that the first reason this list is "historic increases in construction costs" in California.
It's a lot harder than before to find labor here now, that's for sure. Materials have gone up everywhere.
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The only acceptable places for low cost insurance are places that are pave over with concrete and asphalt now.
Little to do with climate change (Score:5, Informative)
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In other words: If you can get an insurance, you probably don't need it.
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I'm paying $3,400/year for my howmeowner's insurance in California now. I just got a 81% increase in my insurance rate for the next 12 months. It's a result of CalFire rezoning our entire county to be a "moderate fire risk". We have the "sin" of having natural oak trees growing in the area. My house has a clear area around it limiting fire propagation FWIW. It doesn't matter. The house could be built of stone and the rate would be the same.
Hyperbole (Score:5, Insightful)
"The USâ(TM)s biggest insurer halting new policies in the USâ(TM)s most populous state?"
Sorry, that is not what happened.
This news didnâ(TM)t come out of nowhere. Last year, two large insurance firms in California ended their coverage for some multimillion-dollar houses in wildfire-prone areas.
Insurers stopped offering flood insurance on riverbanks a long time ago (you now need a government-backed insurance, because it can't be offered profitably). Stopping offering fire insurance for the small number of people in California who choose to live next to a tinderbox seems perfectly logical. People who live in cities do not have to worry about this.
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Quote from the press release at https://newsroom.statefarm.com... [statefarm.com]:
State Farm General Insurance Company®, State Farm’s provider of homeowners insurance in California, will cease accepting new applications including all business and personal lines property and casualty insurance, effective May 27, 2023. This decision does not impact personal auto insurance. State Farm General Insurance Company made this decision due to historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing ca
Can't they just sell their houses? (Score:2)
Can't they just sell their houses and move like the cool children's philosopher suggested? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Whether they sell their house to Aquaman, or The Flame [wikipedia.org] shouldn't really matter that much, in real estate dealings superheroes are fungible and this is advice from a 4D chess master.
Happens for flooding in England, too (Score:2)
There are several big-name insurers who won't insure homes in my hometown of Tewkesbury, England due to repeated flooding. That's only 12k people, mind you. There are plenty of competitors in the market who WILL offer cover, you just have to shop around more and accept slightly higher prices.
BS, not about climate (Score:3)
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I think you're mostly correct. Some regulators might not permit premiums to rise to cover losses based on location, but in California, State Farm seems forced, by the economics of the situation, to charge some of these multimillion dollar homeowners 20-30% of value, anticipating total losses ever 4-10 years. Imagine your monthly premium being $40,000 or more...
In these situations, you can think of hazard insurance as a second mortgage on your property. A 100% second mortgage. With a 10 year max term. Yeah,
This is just false. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now they have awful wildfires in populated areas, and no one wants to insure such a bad bet. Classic FAFO governance.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-led-choked-forests-now-it-s-time-clear-n1243599
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Not true. The "forests" that you mention are about 30 miles away and still we have an insurance problem where I live.
So fires are now added to earthquakes... (Score:2)
Earthquakes are also hard to insure for in California. One of the less entertaining prospects is a serious earthquake resulting in a lot uninsured properties falling into foreclosure and taking a lot of banks down as a result.
It's probably best to see the US economy as a series of spinning plates - with lots of 'interesting' possible scenarios where enough plates fall that it does totally collapse. The present game over raising the debt ceiling, is, of course, another example...
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Earthquake insurance in CA is an interesting case. The premiums are very high, for starters. But the deductible is also so high that its pretty much useless insurance unless the earthquake causes your home to be a total loss. And at that point, you'd expect it to be a wide enough catastrophe that the government would have to step in.
As a result, most people simply don't bother with earthquake insurance. Instead, they lean on modern building codes and construction techniques and hope their homes are desi
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Thanks - very informative.
The Wizard of Oz (Score:3)
so can't get an loan and are forced to rent! (Score:2)
so can't get an loan and are forced to rent!
and you may want to get that add on Rental Insurance as the last thing you want is an fire to burn the home down forcing you to pay for the full rebuild + lose of use just like an rent a car.
State Farm is also leaving Florida (Score:2)
Too much risk in the land of rising water and frequent hurricanes.
https://www.jacksonville.com/s... [jacksonville.com]
Just let me reach in there... (Score:2)
Nothing will convince some Americans (Score:2)
If this doesn't serve as a wake-up call about the climate crisis, I don't know what will.
In the USA, nothing will because everything is political. Approximately 40% of the US voters will always vote Republican. Approximately 40% will always vote Democratic. The Republican voters are in general more deeply religious and more susceptible to being told what to think. So Republican leaders say that climate change is a myth and there is a sort of expectation that it can't destroy the world because that would prevent Jesus from coming back again, so God/Jesus will intervene to prevent the w
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Just remember the US COVID deniers that claimed it does not exist right up to when it killed them. That nicely illustrated the levels of insight and arrogance.
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The Republican voters are in general more deeply religious and more susceptible to being told what to think. So Republican leaders say that climate change is a myth and there is a sort of expectation that it can't destroy the world because that would prevent Jesus from coming back again, so God/Jesus will intervene to prevent the world from being destroyed.
This is the popular go-to argument, but I think it's a bit more "convenient storytelling" than reality. We'll agree that the climate change deniers are generally on the Red Team, but they're a far smaller minority than the media would have you believe. Oh, and as a preface, I'm not a Republican; I haven't voted for a Republican since 2004 and they do not speak for me.
To be honest, people who try to get climate change skeptics to change their mind do so in the dumbest ways possible, like pushing a teenage girl in Sweden as an full fledged "expert" voice on climate matters. And the more unhinged and desperate the climate change warners get to try to get the other side to pay attention, the more they are actually driving them away...nobody at all can ever stop Brazil, India, Russia and China from polluting because it's in their best economic interests to do so.
In my experience, I've found this to be closer to the issue most Republicans have with Climate Change initiatives. Somehow, nearly all the pro
Not about climate change (Score:2)
I'm all for acknowledging climate change is real, and I get that land is generally drier/more flammable as a result, but you can't really blame most wildfires on climate change.
Throughout all of time, wildfires have always been a part of nature, and many forest types actually rely on them.
These days, the root cause of nearly all wildfires is because of humans doing stupid shit such as tossing still-lit cigarette butts, not properly managing camp fires, or parking in tall grass (your catalytic converter can
Rampant crime also a cause? (Score:2)
It sounds as if the company is too polite to bring it up, but don’t you suppose that home and business insurance is also no longer profitable because of rampant crime combined with homeless encampments driving down property values? Every time gangs of retail looters come in and empty out a store and destroy the windows and other structures, the store files insurance claims. When mobs loot people’s homes or set them on fire, more claims are filed. All of that adds up after a while.
It is possible to get fire insurance in CA (Score:3)
This is just one scummy insurance company pulling out because they are afraid of risk. (Isn't that what insurance companies do?)
Contrary to the headline, it is possible for everyone in California to get home insurance.
California has a state sponsored "California Fair Plan" which provides coverage where private insurance doesn't. (I have this for my house.) Can't tell if it's more expensive than private since all insurance has become more expensive.
Interesting data... all California home insurers have paid out only about half of what they took in from premiums for most of the last decade or two. The only exceptions were two bad fire years (2017 and 2018).
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There is another factor, which is that the Calif insurance commissioner is preventing insurance companies from cancelling policies or raising their rates to cover their losses. State Farm probably figured that they were in a losing proposition.,
Most of Calif is not directly threatened by wildfires, so I think it's more complicated than that as to why State Farm pulled out. State Farm insurance is among the most expensive, so the climate in Calif might not fit their business model any more, since rates are
Disposable houses (Score:2)
If you're buying a disposable house, then you don't need insurance, because either
fake news (Score:2)
Regarding wildfires, the acreage being burned these days is far far lower than it had sometimes been historically, just not recently. The main difference is the fact that people have built houses in and right next to the forests. The other difference is there are a lot more stupid people doing stupid things to start the fires. Among the stupid people are the people who run the electric utilities.
The govt likes to hide data about this before 1983 because there is some dispute about how accurate it is. Ho
Wrong (Score:2)
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I disagree. My California homeowner's insurance premium increased 81% this year. I pay $3,400/year for homeowner's insurance now.
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That sounds like the opposite of 'arbitrary.'
Wildfires != climate change (Score:3, Interesting)
The scope and destructive nature of the California wildfires which provoked this policy are almost entirely a symptom of governmental land management policy - not "climate change". Other states manage their public forests better due to different approaches - namely, having proper, regular forest burns to address undergrowth and deadfall buildup while preserving the larger, more mature trees.
This is the land management approach used by native Americans for centuries. It works well, and adds both vitality to the forest and increased variety to the ecosystem through broader habitat variety for animals.
The "baseless emotional appeal of climate change" is fucking tiresome. Knock it off already. Not everything needs to have the cult-like fervor added to it - there are rational, incremental things which can be done to fix problems without doomsday hysteria.
(And before you mod me troll or anything like that - I'm not denying "climate change". It has an impact. But it's not why you've got forest fires which burn as they do in CA, not exclusively or even primarily - or you'd have similar issues throughout the US, which we no longer do with regularity due to forest management policy changing.)
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Actuaries are most certainly factor in AGW:
https://www.actuary.org/sites/... [actuary.org]
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Indeed. And at least in Europe, insurers (and banks) are actually required by regulation to model AGW risks these days. They obviously did it already before, because they want to survive economically.
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Well, considering the beating heart of insurance is those actuary tables, and everything from the pricing of policies to whether any given event in any given place will be covered, is governed by those mighty tomes of risk assessment, whether any insurer actually uses the word "climate change" or not, the price of any given home insurance policy, and whether some things (like overland flooding/inundation or wild fires) would even be covered takes AGW into account. It's why in some places insurance companies
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Allstate stopped renewing policies in coastal counties the Florida market in 1993, the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. One contributing factor was the exposure of massive code violations by contractors and home builders failing to meet standards for roofing and other construction methods. All this time Allstate has repeatedly reduced its exposure with selective terminations of coverage. As many as 13 other carriers have either exited or retracted coverage in Florida recently, and the entire state is reaching
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As I tried to explain, rains can cause flooding due to impermeable soil and inadequate drainage. It does happen.
My home is 6 inches too low to escape a 100-year risk. So I pay. It is on a slab and it's impossible to raise it without new technology.
And this is not limited to my neighborhood, in the Phoenix area a few miles of the I-17 were flooded a few years ago due to pump failure. About 30 homes in Mesa were flooded >15ft due to failed drainage and bad design by a commercial development nearby. That be
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Not "one hurricane". One hurricane that reduced their reserves, increased back-insurance costs and came with reliable predictions that there would be more frequent hurricanes. Insurances are the most apolitical and ideology-resistant companies on the planet.
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Even if it's not climate change, the disasters and payouts are real.