{"id":31882,"date":"2024-09-04T20:04:28","date_gmt":"2024-09-04T20:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/2024\/09\/04\/how-climate-change-shapes-the-home-insurance-crisis-jacksonville-today\/"},"modified":"2024-09-04T20:05:04","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T20:05:04","slug":"how-climate-change-shapes-the-home-insurance-crisis-jacksonville-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/2024\/09\/04\/how-climate-change-shapes-the-home-insurance-crisis-jacksonville-today\/","title":{"rendered":"How climate change shapes the home insurance crisis &#8211; Jacksonville Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-8864793242727901\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Maria Lopez lives in a small, green, two-bedroom bungalow in Tampa with palm trees lining the yard. She has art everywhere inside her home. She\u2019s a visual artist, a graphic designer, and her husband was a painter who recreated Florida waterscapes and landscapes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was his last painting, and you can see the darkness in the sky and all that, because he knew he was very sick,\u201d Lopez said. He died in 1996 of pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n<p>Lopez is an experienced homeowner. She immigrated from Cuba in the 1960s, and she\u2019s basically owned a home in Florida for 50-plus years. She\u2019s had townhouses, apartments, condos, houses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been through everything,\u201d she said. And she thinks Florida\u2019s property insurance is \u201ca mess\u201d right now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis last year, I was shocked that my insurance, all of a sudden, was canceled,\u201d Lopez said.<\/p>\n<p>Her insurer pulled out of Florida, just refused to sell policies here anymore. She had no say in the matter. Maria was passed off to another insurance company.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey accepted my payment, they sent me a policy, and two months later, they decided they didn\u2019t want me either. Why?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\">The climate issue<\/h3>\n<p>What\u2019s the tipping point for the average American? What singular aspect of climate change is most likely going to push a regular person to make some kind of big change in their personal lives? Climate experts say \u2026 home insurance.<\/p>\n<p>Yep, boring old insurance is already reshaping where people live. It\u2019s forcing some out of their homes, making the cost of a house out of reach for others. And for more and more people, changing their decision about where in the country they should live. And those experts say this is only the beginning.<\/p>\n<p>Home Insurance is a frontline of defense against climate change. If your home is damaged by a flood or a fire, a good insurance policy is what allows you to rebuild, or at least get a payout money to help you start over.<\/p>\n<p>Insurance is so important that you can\u2019t get a mortgage without a policy, but what\u2019s happening right now all across America is the home insurance market is collapsing. Big brand name insurance companies are straight up walking away from the riskiest states, and the companies that are sticking around are often doubling and tripling rates over a matter of just a few years.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing like this has ever happened before, and nowhere is this crisis worse than Florida. The home insurance market in every other state seems to be headed down the road that Florida has paved.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\">Hearing from homeowners<\/h3>\n<p>For this story, we wanted to hear from people shouldering the burden of this crisis, so we put a call out to homeowners in the Tampa area along the Gulf Coast.<\/p>\n<p>We were inundated. People seemed desperate to talk to us about what they\u2019d been going through. And everyone said the same thing: Until recently, their home insurance was in the back of their minds. Now it\u2019s blowing up their lives.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n<div id=\"attachment_76386\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\">\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-76386\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sarah Haverstick, 41, is a company manager raising two kids with her husband in Bradenton. Her home insurer decided not to write policies in Florida anymore. | Jessica Meszaros, WUSF<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI grabbed the mail on my way in, and I opened a letter and a few expletives came out of my mouth, and it was a notice from the insurance provider basically saying that you\u2019re no longer going to be covered,\u201d said Sarah Haverstick of Bradenton.<\/p>\n<p>Just like that. No warning. Haverstick\u2019s home insurance was canceled. And for Amy Beer of St. Petersburg, this crisis started with a stranger at her door.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis guy knocked on the door and said, I\u2019m here to inspect the exterior of your house. Your insurance company sent me,\u201d Beer said.<\/p>\n<p>He wandered around and checked out the house. Weeks later, Beer got a threatening letter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you don\u2019t replace your roof by January 8th, your home insurance will be canceled,\u201d she said of the letter.<\/p>\n<p>A new roof is possibly one of the most expensive repairs a homeowner will ever undertake. Beer\u2019s insurer gave her just weeks to get it done.<\/p>\n<p>This stuff will stop your heart. Everyone we spoke to was in fight or flight mode, but they didn\u2019t have time to feel scared. They had to jump in to figure out how to insure their homes. Some folks we heard from haven\u2019t been kicked off their insurance outright, but they are being priced out. That\u2019s the case for Jeffrey Phillips of St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust a few years ago, I was paying around $5,000 a year for my homeowners insurance. It\u2019s now over $15,000 per year,\u201d Phillips said.<\/p>\n<p>That is a threefold rate increase. Who can budget for that?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy insurance agents don\u2019t seem to be able to help. I\u2019ve looked on the internet to see if there are other options to have, and I just have found I\u2019m stuck,\u201d Phillips said.<\/p>\n<p>Phillips is an eye doctor. He said he\u2019d like to fully retire, but can\u2019t, because of his home insurance premiums. Beer, by the way, is a writer, and Haverstick is a company manager. Haverstick is raising young kids. She and Beer were both in remission from cancer when that letter or knock at the door came. Also, none of these homeowners had any real damage done by storms. No one even filed a claim with their insurers and still got kicked off or priced out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was such a sort of slap in the face and the idea that all of a sudden I can just get this notice of non-renewal now you\u2019re not holding up your end of this agreement,\u201d Haverstick said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\">How we got here<\/h3>\n<p>Florida isn\u2019t the only state where it\u2019s getting really expensive or just impossible to insure your home. This is a climate change problem. Insurers are pulling out of states where they\u2019re losing money.<\/p>\n<p>In Louisiana, they\u2019re losing money because of hurricanes; in California, wildfires; in the Midwest, severe storms and tornadoes.<\/p>\n<p>But in Florida, home insurance is in a full-blown crisis. It\u2019s worse here than any other state, and it\u2019s been brewing here longer. If Florida is where the rest of the country is headed, then we should all pay attention.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis cycle we\u2019re in. We\u2019ve seen it all happen before. Florida seems to be kind of stuck in this kind of terrible loop of insurance crises that have never really resolved themselves, and frankly, I don\u2019t know if they ever will,\u201d said Lawrence Mower, who covers the state House for the Tampa Bay Times and The Miami Herald.<\/p>\n<p>Mower said, to understand Florida\u2019s chronic cycle of home insurance crises, you have to go back to where it started: Hurricane Andrew in 1992.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, Hurricane Andrew was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. It came ashore as a Category 5 storm and destroyed tens of thousands of homes in South Florida.<\/p>\n<p>Residents filed about 650,000 insurance claims. Insurance companies \u2014 big ones \u2014 were not ready for this. State Farm, Allstate, Travelers, Prudential \u2026 some dropped hundreds of thousands of policies. Others just abandoned the state.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of Floridians were left with this situation where they couldn\u2019t find insurance for their homes,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\">Solutions that became problems<\/h3>\n<p>And housing fuels Florida\u2019s economy. This was an existential threat. State lawmakers had to do something, so they came up with a couple of big solutions that would actually become even bigger problems.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n<div id=\"attachment_76388\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" color=\"8f6d6a\" transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #8f6d6a;\" decoding=\"async\" describedby=\"caption-attachment-76388\" class=\"not-transparent wp-image-76388\" src=\"https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-800x450.jpg 800w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-427x240.jpg 427w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-100x56.jpg 100w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/jeffrey-phillips-st-pete-homeowner-1-1650x928.jpg 1650w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-76388\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jeffrey Phillips has lived in his St. Petersburg home since 2011 but is considering leaving if his home insurance prices keep increasing. | Jessica Meszaros, WUSF<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Take Citizens Property Insurance Corp., a home insurance company created by lawmakers and run by the state. It\u2019s basically socialized home insurance for people who can\u2019t find coverage on the private market.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCitizens was supposed to act like an accordion,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>Lawmakers set up Citizens in the years after Hurricane Andrew and because of high demand from people dumped by commercial insurers, Citizens expanded. It took on hundreds of thousands of homeowners. Lawmakers freaked out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt violates Republicans\u2019 idea of the government and the free market. When it gets big, there becomes this panic among politicians to get rid of Citizens policies. Get rid of these policies, put them back on the private market,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>Lawmakers squeezed the accordion. They kicked a bunch of homeowners off Citizens. So where did all those people go if the state couldn\u2019t cover them, and big insurers fled? How did they find home insurance? Here\u2019s another solution that became a problem.<\/p>\n<p>Florida lawmakers encouraged entrepreneurs, people with no insurance experience, to open new very small insurance companies. Citizens dumped tons of its policies directly into the hands of these small companies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBasically, these companies are vehicles to do one thing, and that is to extract as much money out of the insurance market as possible for their investors,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>In the same market where big insurance companies had lost money, the CEOs of these tiny companies started making $20-plus million a year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese guys are making more than the CEOs of State Farm, nationally, Allstate, Progressive. These guys were getting filthy rich,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s how that\u2019s possible. Let\u2019s say I want to make a bunch of money in Florida\u2019s insurance market. Insurance companies are highly regulated. States actually limit how much profit I can skim off of all those monthly premiums that homeowners pay me.<\/p>\n<p>But I\u2019m greedy, so here\u2019s what I do. I open an insurance company that\u2019s only a shell. I don\u2019t hire anyone to work there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ll never deal with somebody literally from the insurance company, because the insurance company often will employ no one,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, I open a string of sister companies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ll deal with a sister company of the insurance company, one that charges the insurance company a ton of money for these services,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>My sister companies do all the work for my shell insurance company. One of them handles claims, another does my marketing. I use my sister companies to charge my shell company crazy inflated prices for these basic services, and the financial regulations do not apply to my sister companies. So, my shell insurance company does OK, but my sister companies, they do great.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd what it\u2019s done to the insurance market is about a third of every premium dollar goes gets extracted out of the company and goes to profits,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>While lawmakers scrambled to prop up Florida\u2019s shaky home insurance market, you know what they didn\u2019t plan for? Climate change.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\">Back-to-back hurricanes<\/h3>\n<p>In the years after Hurricane Andrew, the oceans warmed up, and then the Atlantic started pumping out hurricanes like never before.<\/p>\n<p>In 2004 and 2005, eight hurricanes hit Florida in two years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd when Florida started getting hit by storms, these little companies started going out of business. They couldn\u2019t handle it,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>Small insurers went bankrupt, left and right, although the CEOs tend to do just fine as these small insurers go bankrupt. Take former Tampa Mayor Bill Poe Sr.<\/p>\n<p>This powerful politician opened his own little insurance company and in 2008 state regulators sued him, his wife and five of his children. The family and other executives were accused of pocketing $140 million as their web of companies were going bankrupt.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, after all those hurricanes, more insurers pulled out or closed shop. New ones replaced them, and for a while, also pulled in crazy profits. And then it happened all over again starting in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Four massive hurricanes have hit Florida in recent years. The coastal water is now so warm that storms rapidly intensify just before they come ashore. There may never be a hurricane lull here again.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\">Where things stand<\/h3>\n<p>Florida\u2019s insurance market is in the worst shape it\u2019s ever been. Citizens is under investigation by the U.S. Senate for apparently not having enough money to pay out if a big disaster hits.<\/p>\n<p>But at the same time, Citizens has been expanding like crazy. In just the last five years, it has more than tripled the number of homeowners it covers from about 420,000 people up to 1.4 million.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\n<div id=\"attachment_76390\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" color=\"878681\" transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #878681;\" decoding=\"async\" describedby=\"caption-attachment-76390\" class=\"not-transparent wp-image-76390\" src=\"https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-800x450.jpg 800w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-427x240.jpg 427w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-100x56.jpg 100w, https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/amy-beer-st-pete-homeowner-1-1650x928.jpg 1650w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-76390\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Amy Beer, 62, with her dog Henry. She got a new metal roof installed after her home insurance company threatened to drop her if she didn\u2019t replace it. | Jessica Meszaros, WUSF<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Meanwhile, private home insurance here is super chaotic. Farmers pulled out of the state last year, and there\u2019s this constant churn of small insurers going bankrupt and being replaced by others just like them.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the small companies control the market. A few dozen small companies hold 70% of home insurance policies in Florida.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese companies will turn around and give millions of dollars to Florida politicians to finance their campaigns, and when there have been serious efforts to reform the market, these little companies have stood in the way,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>Florida lawmakers recently made it harder for consumers to sue their insurance companies and mandated roof inspections for homes over 15 years old. Every time they pass some kind of reform, it seems like their priority is protecting insurers, not homeowners.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"\">Canary in the coal mine<\/h3>\n<p>\u201cFlorida is an example of what happened when that risk hit a tipping point. The way Florida dealt with that is basically a lesson for everyone else because we\u2019re already starting to see insurance companies in other parts of the country pull out. We\u2019re already starting to see more natural disasters in places that did not see them before, and insurance companies are very good about shedding risk,\u201d Mower said.<\/p>\n<p>None of the homeowners had a clear answer to what they were going to do next. Some might stay in Florida, some might leave.<\/p>\n<p>Maria Lopez wants to stay in Tampa. Her daughter lives next door. She loves her little home, but \u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s a mess. I\u2019m not like a government take all person. I have my own company. I\u2019m all for independent people and having their own thing, but definitely, there\u2019s an abuse to the citizen. There\u2019s an abuse to people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Lopez got passed around from one insurer to another. Eventually she got covered for more than she was paying before. It has been so frustrating for her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut what really got me through all this, when I spoke to friends, is that I have many, many friends that don\u2019t have insurance anymore. And this is not like the very poor people; it\u2019s everybody,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s not just Lopez\u2019s friends. There\u2019s data on this. One in five Floridians are now going without home insurance.<\/p>\n<p>For years, there have been anecdotes and headlines about Florida\u2019s broken home insurance system. Now that we understand exactly how climate change is breaking it, we\u2019re left with more questions: What will happen after the next big storm? Who will be able to afford to live in Florida. And if Florida is the canary in the coal mine, what will that mean for the rest of the country?<\/p>\n<p><i>This story was written in collaboration with Carlyle Calhoun and Jack Rodolico with additional help from Garrett Hazelwood, Halle Parker, Eva Tesfaye and Ryan Vasquez for the podcast Sea Change, a production of WWNO and WRKF.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2024 WUSF 89.7<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/jaxtoday.org\/2024\/09\/04\/climate-change-home-insurance-crisis\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maria Lopez lives in a small, green, two-bedroom bungalow in Tampa with palm trees lining the yard. She has art everywhere inside her home. She\u2019s a visual artist, a graphic&hellip;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17739,17740,9,17741,1177],"class_list":["post-31882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-home-insurance","tag-insurance-crisis","tag-news","tag-property-insurance","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31884,"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31882\/revisions\/31884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tvbrazilusa.com\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}