Homeowners Insurance Crisis
By Mark Fernwood
CA has a major homeowners insurance crisis. Most insurance companies are leaving the state entirely. State Farm, the largest CA home insurer announced they were canceling 72,000 policies by nonrenewal. I only found out I was not being renewed by calling my agent. After calling, all the brokers I could find, none could offer me a replacement policy.
I found out this was due to a leftist Democrat Insurance Commissioner named Ricardo Laura. Apparently, he has no background in insurance at all. He just has made it almost impossible for insurers to raise their rates. The wild fire losses have been huge in recent years. Companies have spread the risk by their using “reinsurance.” This covers insurers unusually large losses. Reinsurance rates have risen sharply, dramatically increasing costs to insurers. This and combined losses, had insurers losing money with each policy. They had no choice but to leave.
The alternative offered was to use the CA “FAIR” Plan, which is bare bones fire insurance. It is also on the verge of insolvency. To fully insure under this, one needs to purchase an additional DIC policy from a private insurer, that will cover the rest. This is a very expensive alternative, in my case, about twice what I had been paying. Instead, I found an agent that offered coverage through an out-of-state company. This was also much more expensive, but a solid company.
The reason CA has experienced such massive fires and losses (and continues with massive fire losses this year) is due to lack of proper forest maintenance and the removal of dead trees. According to the US Forrest Service, there were 129 million dead trees in CA. Most are conifers that were killed by bark beetles. This is the result of environmentalist’s lawsuits to prevent any logging, even the removal of dead trees and thinning overcrowded forests. Overcrowded forests greatly enhance fire risk. Radical environmentalism poses a very real, a very dangerous threat.
Mark Fernwood
Newsoms’ California: San Bernardino County supervisors ask state to declare emergency over homeowners insurance - (capoliticalnewsandviews.com) article
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNTUv2xtmfk 4 min, Steve Forbes
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd566303.pdf USDA document