As California prepares for wildfires, hundreds of thousands of homeowners are losing their insurance
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- Опубликовано: 11 май 2024
- (8 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Roseville, California - 6 May 2024
1. Various CAL FIRE demonstration to promote defensible space around homes for Wildfire Preparedness Week
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Mark Sektnan, American Property Casualty Insurance Association:
"The insurance market right now is in chaos and part of it is in chaos because for years insurers have not have adequate rates. In the last ten years, they paid $1.13 for every dollar they took in. So insurers need to get adequate rates. Then they can start reviewing the policies and the mitigation efforts that people take and price them appropriately."
3. Various shed without defensible space catches fire during demonstration
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Gary Ledbetter, Rebuilt after losing home in 2018 Paradise wildfire:
"I hear a lot of discouraging stories, people saying their policies went up 700%. People saying they were dropped. You kind of hear a lot of bad stories, unfortunately. Frankly, it makes me nervous at this point in time. I have a good policy and a fair price. I have no illusions that that will hold true for the next year, five years, ten years."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oakland, California - 6 May 2024
5. Various homeowner Ed Bratt shows non renewal letter he received from his home insurance company
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Ed Bratt, Homeowner:
"So I received a letter from my insurer, the same insurer that we've had since I bought this house in 1999, saying they were not going to renew our policy. They said we lived in a high fire area and they were not renewing it."
7. Flowers in front of Bratt's home
18 SOUNDBITE (English) Ed Bratt, Homeowner:
"I wish the insurance commissioner and the insurance companies could work out what's wrong here, why this has suddenly come to a head."
9. Large tree in front of Bratt's home
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Ed Bratt, Homeowner:
"I can't sell it. Apparently now you can't sell houses because they can't get insurance. I mean, it's just a disaster that's unfolding here."
11, Bratt walks into home
STORYLINE:
Several major insurers have pulled out of California’s homeowners insurance market, citing increased costs related to growing wildfires risk in the state.
Carriers including Allstate, Farmers and State Farm have either stopped issuing new policies in California or announced they would not renew existing policies in the state.
In recent years, thousands of homes in California have been destroyed by wildfires, fueled by climate change.
There's an effort underway in the state legislature to try to fix the problem through a series of reforms that have put the insurance industry and consumer advocates at odds.
California's elected Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara is attempting to overhaul home insurance regulations aimed at calming the state's imploding market by relaxing regulations and giving insurers more freedom to raise premiums.
Consumer advocates worry the method for estimating the costs of future fires will not be transparent and will leave homeowners with excessive premiums.
At an event to promote wildfire awareness and to encourage homeowners to create defensible space around their homes, Gary Ledbetter, who rebuilt after losing his home in the 2018 Paradise wildfire, said he was able to get a new insurance policy.
But Ledbetter said many of his friends and neighbors in Paradise have not been able to find insurance and those who had are paying much higher premiums than they did before, despite rebuilding using recommended nonflammable materials.
AP video by Haven Daley
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Insurance companies make bad investments with premiums and now the policy holders have to pay for it. Pretty sure in 2020 when Farm Bureu holdings were valued at 11$ a share they made some of the choices, now that its up to 55$ a share they are now going to be extremely profitable.
All intentional, that money is going to someone’s pocket.
lol, so now every year the insurers decide just quit all contracts in developing high risk areas shortly before the wildfire season? This needs to be regulated. Damn.
If you have a mortgage, the bank REQUIRES insurance.. so what..?? banks foreclose on those uninsured??
Then how do they resell it if the next buyer can not get a mortgage due to being unisurable lol. My guess is they do not foreclose and if it burns the homeowner is just F**ked
Seen the train coming down the tracks
I mean, if a bank can take an inch, they would try to take a mile, so I would not be surprised if they tried to do this.
They will get a forced policy by the lender that’s really expensive if they lose insurance.
This insurance epidemic needs major national regulation
Preventional burns would save thousands of unnecessary chemicals burned when homes catch
They should loose fire coverage.
If one cannot see the plan to purge CA can’t help ya!
The plan? People never should have been living in the desert. What were the thinking is the better thing to analyze. I went to Vegas for the first time ever after living in the Southeast my entire life and it just seems so clear that humans weren't meant to live in the area in huge numbers. Get over yourself and recognize the ecological destruction caused in the area.
Don't worry...smart cities are coming!