State Farm will discontinue coverage for 72,000 houses and apartments in California starting this summer, the insurance giant said this week, nine months after announcing it would not issue new home policies in the state
The Illinois-based company, California’s largest insurer, cited soaring costs, the increasing risk of catastrophes like wildfires and outdated regulations as reasons it won’t renew the policies on 30,000 houses and 42,000 apartments, the Bay Area News Group reported Thursday.
And like a bad neighbor, State Farm won’t care.
No insurance companies care. They are all in business to make money. I can’t blame them for not wanting to insure a disaster-prone area.
Hahaha I heard the jingle as I read it! Perfection!
All insurance types should be nationalized.
I agree, however I also agree that you should not expect to be able to build in an area that is prone to disaster. Like if I build my house on a Sandy Beach and the foundation fails because it’s on Sand I’m not going to expect that the insurance company is going to cover it. The same should be considered for areas that are prone to natural disasters like California or Florida with Hurricanes
I agree but I also think people who’ve lived there prior to this designation should be grandfathered in or compensated for uprooting and moving.
There are millions of people in the country who through little fault of their own could be totally screwed by this.
I believe that if an insurance company /chooses/ to take on a insurance contract with a homeowner, they should be able to go through with it. So i fully agree with the grandfathered in thing, but like I also feel that a company shouldn’t be forced to keep a customer outside that contract expiring. If they are canceling the contract mid cycle I am 100% expecting compensation, but if its just a policy renewal? there’s other companies or if not that was a risk being built in a higher risk zone
Are US loans not given with the prerequisite that the property is insured? Wouldn’t pulling out unilaterally fuck everyone with a loan?
if it was allowed to withdraw prior to the loan being paid off yes, if they can’t secure another insurance anyway, but in my opinion that isn’t the insurance companies problem, they only provide their service, they are not involved with the financial issues of the broker/lender. It would fall on the consumer choosing to live in a potentially dangerous area to insure. That being said at least in this situation, the state has acknowledged that it’s an issue for homeleasers, and has given an alternative, but people dislike the cost of the insurance.
The oil industry will keep making money and we’re going to pick up the check in the form of insurance, taxes, and misery.
It’s true, these are externalized costs.
Socialize the costs, privatize the profits
What climate catastrophe-free area of the country does State Farm think it will make sense to still insure homes in?
Also, I thought they were like a good neighbor.
“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there” means that they resemble a good neighbor only insofar as both share the attribute of existence.
At least Geico is relatively honest. “Yes, we are a bunch of reptiles.”
Non-coastal new England is pretty safe. No earthquakes, few hurricane effects, almost no tornadoes, tends to stay damp enough and has enough old deciduous growth, where forest fires aren’t a big issue.
I am sure there are other places that are low risk as well.
And if the entire population of the country moves there due to insurance pulling out of everywhere else, non coastal new england will turn into San Francisco.
This isn’t the answer you think it is.
I was just answering the simple question, not providing a solution to a problem.
Where does the CEO live again?
Chicago area, apparently. Not exactly free from climate catastrophes.
No place is 100% safe. Around the great lakes is probably one of the best places to be going forward though.
Part of the problem is that many of the states where insurance companies are leaving have rules that limit what they can charge. That sounds good in principle, but with climate change causing these disasters to happen more often the insurance companies are bleeding money. Ultimately insurance as an industry can’t work if you keep having losses, and if you can’t increase prices to cope then you have no choice but to withdraw.
I’ve sure State Farm is happy to cover catastrophe-prone areas, but only if they won’t lose money on average.
Being forced to have home insurance is ridiculous. Private companies jack up prices, make all the rules, and come and go as they please. We need to figure out a better system!
The only one forcing people to have homeowners insurance is mortgage companies, that want to ensure the collateral on that mortgage doesn’t disappear.
That and common sense, as even if you don’t have a mortgage, you also don’t want a disaster to make your largest asset go poof.
There is competition. That is meant to keep prices lower. But insuring people in disaster prone areas just isn’t a wise business decision.
So we need to evacuate the entire East Coast and Gulf Coast (hurricanes), the Midwest (tornadoes), the West Coast (fires), and any city built next to a river? Really?
Those areas are not at all equivalent. Florida gets flattened by hurricanes every year. California is on fire every year. Other areas get disasters but not with nearly the same frequency.
Once you get a bit farther north than Florida huricanes are not an every year thing. Sure they still happen but not with nearly the frequency that they do along the gulf coast. The midwest gets tornados but outside of tornado alley they are a rare thing. Even in the areas where they are frequent the damage tends to be more localized when they hit than with huricanes or wild fires. As far as rivers go, they do flood but that is something that can be controlled. As someone who has lived along the coast of the Mississippi for their entire life I am very aware of all of the flood prevention work the army core of engineers has put into the area and it all works. Sure it’s still a risk if there is a dam failure or an especially heavy storm but that is a once every 50 year thing not a literally every year thing. If you are living in an area that floods every year and that risk can’t be mitigated then, yes, you should stop living there.
Sometimes a comment comes along that’s so full of bullshit it’s kind of impressive.
Climate change will be doing a lot of that, like it our not.
But at the very least, the rest of us shouldn’t have to subsidize it. I’m tired of my insurance in the Great Lakes region skyrocketing because of disasters in CA or the gulf coast.
Not (re)building in areas prone to wildfires, mudslides, floods, and the like would be a good start. Otherwise, someone has to pay to rebuild when the ever more frequent disaster hits. State farm and other insurers suck in many ways, but this isn’t unreasonable on their part.
Who is forced to have home insurance?
If you can afford a Californian mortgage, you can afford to leave the state and buy your house outright.
But some people think they’re “too good” for that, while they complain about not being able to afford where they currently are.
I feel like that requirement comes from mortgage lenders, not the government.
Exactly. I don’t think the government requires people to have home insurance.
I certainly don’t have it.
“just upend your entire life and everything you’ve worked for to move to some hellhole flatland state that mainly exists for late night TV jokes to be made about it, where everyone will hate you for your previous life you were forced to give up, because these same cornfed fuckwads want to live in the 1700s, and say you have to join them or they’ll burn crosses on your lawn”
K
die broke then.
What? Cheaper areas aren’t good enough for you?
Why should you get more before the people who live in those areas if you can’t afford it?
Answer: Entitlement.
So if I can’t afford to live where I do because my tax dollars support your flyover state that repeatedly wastes the money on corruption instead of helping peoplw, I need to leave the land I was born to join the untoothed masses? That’s the conservative way, isn’t it? “Oh, we ruined your progress, you should have to do it out way now.”
There’s nothing wrong with the land itself, just the people who live there who shaped their society.
If you can’t afford to live somewhere, then you have to go somewhere cheaper.
It’s part of supply and demand and you’re not exempt from it, despite how entitled you may feel.
You’re also stereotyping which shows your lack of experience outside of major cities. Most of your fear comes from what you do not know or understand.
Unfortunately, you are already too far gone. For you to make better financial decisions, you’d have to admit you’re wrong; and nobody wants to do that.
Good luck waiting for other people to solve your problems. I’m sure that will work out, eventually.
Sorry fella, you replied to your strawman version of me instead of the real thing.
Not really. I just said things you don’t like so you pretend they’re not relevant.
I see it all the time from people like you.
News flash, even if you own your home, you still may want insurance on it.
Being forced to have home insurance is ridiculous.
Keyword: forced
News flash, you need to brush up on your reading comprehension.
Brush up on YOUR reading comprehension. The only party requiring insurance is a mortgage lender, and you were suggesting moving to some shithole cheap enough to pay cash for a house. My point is, even if you own outright – shit, ESPECIALLY if you own outright – it’s probably a good idea.
I fucking hate insurance companies too, but you know what? My car was hit by an unlicensed driver less than 2 weeks ago and was totaled. I would be fucking SCREWED right now if I didn’t have car insurance. Instead I’m getting the car loan paid off and a check for the remaining $20k I can do whatever I want with. It’s gonna be to buy a new car, but I have the choice, instead of holding the bag of shit.
Dang.
I need to have a word with you English teachers.
Listen, I know you didn’t explicitly say “don’t pay for insurance, move somewhere cheap!”, but you absolutely implied it with your argument. Who is forced? Nobody, you’re right. But realistically, if you want to either:
A. Like where you live, or B. have even a fraction of financial safety
you must. Very very few people can afford to purchase a house with cash, especially now, and especially first-generation home buyers. That gives you a pretty unfortunate choice to make.
My main point is, your rhetoric shows that you think WE are the problem. That average Americans should give up the idea that we could live in a city where there is culture, diversity, good education, public transit, and god forbid modest housing options.
This further pushes up the costs of homeownership.
There are some places you really should just not be building houses.
It’s not about that. That’s the insurance industry’s cover story.
The real story is insurance companies giving a hissy fit about being subject to regulation by the state’s insurance commissioner.
If the insurance industry was only dropping coverage in the middle of forests, or on beachfront or riverfront property, that would make sense. But it’s not. They’re dropping coverage on infill development in the middle of cities.Infill development in the middle of a city can be just as disaster prone and those in a forest or on the ocean.
Uh huh. Because middle of SF is the same fire risk as paradise, CA
I never said it was exactly the same. And San Francisco has its own risks besides fire. And heck, I’d call Paradise a city, too.
If selling insurance to California was a good business, they wouldn’t leave the market.
So much of this could be fixed by forcing electric companies to update their infrastructure and force them to bury power lines.
Or they should force the power company to pay the full cost of every home damaged by their outdated power lines triggering fires.
It’s not that simple. Yes, power lines do start a lot of fires, but climate change induced drought is the main cause of the scale and frequency of wildfires in California. If the conditions are right it’s only a matter of time until something sets it off.
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Wouldn’t it be a great idea not to build in places that don’t burn down, get flooded, or blown away on a regular base? Because that is the main reason that those houses cannot be insured anymore.
Most california wildfires are caused by decaying power lines because PG&E decided they would rather buy their own stock than fix their infrastructure.
And global climate change is turning more and more of the country into disaster prone areas. You really think the answer is everyone should just move? Explain the logistics of that.
If, like with PG&E, they would actually extract all the money from the culprits, insurances would come out fine in the end. As they don’t, this boils down to an accepted risk to live in that place.
And: there is more need to build a house in the middle of a dry forest known to burn easily. Yes, people want to live right in the nature, but sometimes having a safety gap is the smarter choice.
Good, we shouldn’t be paying for people to build houses under water and in wildfire zones.
Louisiana has entered the chat
