Where’s the Political Concern?
The news — and our political campaigns — are awash in reports of vast property damage and the very sad human tales of people losing their homes as well as more than 225 souls as climate-change hurricanes are inundating new inland areas that had not been considered storm targets.
As Hurricane Milton is now hitting Florida, the property damage from Hurricane Helene alone is estimated as more than $250 billion. Milton is sure to equal at least that. Insurers are fleeing the storm areas, leaving homeowners to scramble for more expensive alternatives wherever they can find them.
Even aside from inane, politically inspired misinformation coming from Republican candidates about whether government emergency aid is being withheld by perceived partisan concerns, a lot of the coverage is missing the bigger part of the story unfolding.
Rather than the government response, the bulk of home coverage for emergencies is from private insurance companies. By any measure, private insurance doesn’t cover the biggest cause of storm damage to homes — rising water — and we’re watching the insurers telling homeowners in states like Florida and California that they are canceling home insurance altogether or raising rates manyfold.
Because of federal government pressure, insurers were forced to start offering flood insurance in areas seen to be vulnerable. But at best, that covers less than 4% of homes, even in the areas hard-hit by Helene. A study by The Washington Post found that across seven states affected by Helene, only 0.8 percent of homes had flood insurance. By contrast, 21 percent of homes in coastal counties in those areas had coverage.
More to the point, the National Flood Insurance Program maps were drawn long enough ago they no longer accurately reflect who might be in a flood zone. The reality of the climate change effects that Donald Trump denies, even as he is incorrectly criticizing the immediate response to Helene by the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, is that hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes and other serious weather events have intensified with warmer temperatures that are widening the target zones for damage.
Where’s the Political Concern?
Add to the growing damage from storms the human craziness to insist on rebuilding in the same damage zones, the cost of appropriate insurance, and the corporate plans by profit-driven insurers to continue collect premiums without maintaining payouts, and we can see the clear outlines of a building crisis.
Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, a nonprofit created by the state in 2002 as a response to insurers fleeing the home insurance market over storms, itself announced over the weekend that it was canceling hundreds of thousands of homeowner policies. Citizens is tax-funded but operates like a private corporation — overseen by the governor, the state chief financial officer, attorney general and commissioner of agriculture.
Insurers fleeing the home market to preserve profitability has hit California, too, after dozens of destructive wildfires. The damage is getting worse, and the corporate mind-set will become more restrictive.
You’d think this would be as big a political issue as, say, access to health care insurance. The available disaster assistance money is for temporary shelter, food and water — not to rebuild homes. Because of outdated policies and high prices, most people don’t know they should enroll in flood insurance — or can’t afford it.
Yet the political talk is about whether Biden and Harris are withholding aid to areas that traditionally vote Republican — they are not — to spend more money on migrants — another falsehood.
Indeed, as Florida shows, any perceived crisis following withdrawal of 30 insurers from the state’s home insurance market — almost surely without prior notice to homeowners — has fueled special legislative sessions that have reduced incentives for people to sue insurers over disputes or limiting second homes that would be eligible for Citizens. This is not only an insurer protection issue, but a consumer issue that is going relatively unaddressed.
Even creation of the Citizens insurance program limited the value of eligible properties, ignoring the constantly rising home replacement needs in the state.
States have insurance commissioners, but it is not clear that they see their role as protecting homeowners in a time of increasing damage from ever-more intense storms and events striking areas well beyond traditionally defined flood plains or wildfire danger.
Consider The Trends
Without expensive specialized insurance, people struck by floods or other events must rely on complicated federal programs or aid from nonprofits to rebuild their lives. FEMA’s Individual Assistance Program can help provide urgent resources but is capped at around $42,500 for housing and $42,500 for other costs. Most get far less.
There are more than 100 counties designated now for this aid. In those counties, the Post found wide declines in flood insurance over a decade, and about half of flood insurance policies have been dropped.
The flood insurance program, which requires flood insurance for a home mortgage in designated areas, always is, um, under water. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said this week he saw no reason to assemble Congress to pony up more funds to address flooding emergencies — despite the Trump campaign rages. Project 2025recommends phasing out the program entirely and replacing it with private options — which do not exist at anything resembling affordable prices.
The maps for floods and earthquakes and more are akin to the debate over health insurers who until the Affordable Care Act were able to exclude policies for pre-existing illnesses.
As with health care issues, including abortion services, proper coverage for the nation’s homeowners against damage from intensifying storms, is a patchwork of services, depending on where you live and whether insurance companies even choose to offer the business.
A New York Times analysis from May showed that homeowners’ insurers lost money in 18 states in 2023—up from eight states in 2013—largely because of expensive disasters. Payouts increasingly cost insurers more than they are getting in premiums. Homeowners are seeing their policies jump. According to statistics compiled by Insurify, the average annual cost of home insurance climbed nearly 20 percent between 2021 and 2023. In Florida, which has the highest insurance costs in the country, the average homeowner paid over $10,000 a year in 2023—more than $8,600 above the national rate.
Maybe it’s right that to live on the Florida coast or in specific parts of California should cost more, that the cost of private insurance should be attuned to damage. But it is a conversation we should be having in public, and not settled simply by the profit whim of corporations.
At the same time, our politicians should get serious about identifying real problems rather than debating made-up partisan ones.
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