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company, California’s largest insurer, cited soaring costs, the increasing risk of catastrophes like wildfires and outdated regulations as reasons it won’t renew the policies on 30,000 houses and 42,000 apartments, the Bay Area News Group reported Thursday.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
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
These houses weren’t built when these zones were high risk and more companies are moving out, leaving people with nothing.
Frankly, I feel no pity in forcing companies that have bent people over and fucked them to insure these places. Maybe that’ll teach them a lesson in not helping fight climate change as risk management
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.
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.
This further pushes up the costs of homeownership.
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
