Wetter, more destructive hurricanes, like the series of storms that hit Florida this fall, are pushing the state’s homeowners insurance market to the brink of collapse.
When Florida Atlantic University pollsters asked in June who was most responsible for the state’s rising insurance premiums, the largest percentage of voters surveyed blamed Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. But Florida’s last public insurer, which has lured lower-quality insurers into the state and is struggling to serve more homeowners as private insurers go out of business or go bankrupt, It was his Republican predecessor, Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator, who forced him to quit the company. Refused to update policy in hurricane-prone areas.
Scott’s current Democratic opponent in the Senate, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel Powell, said voters will focus on Scott’s eight years as governor and the property damaged by hurricanes Helen and Milton. We hope that this can be linked to the financial strain caused by the increasing number of insurance companies not paying for repairs.
As part of a multiyear campaign to get more Floridians into the private insurance market, Mr. Scott increased premiums and offered discounts at Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, a government-backed nonprofit insurance company. rescinded, while giving private companies additional incentives and protections to operate. In the state.
Now, as warming storms routinely cause billions of dollars in damage across Florida, private insurance companies are being forced to flee the state and bring customers back to Citizens. However, the deals currently offered by public insurance companies have high premiums and poor coverage.
Mucarsel-Powell helped contribute $200 million to Everglades restoration during her two years in Congress, representing a district west of Miami. Since the start of her Senate campaign, she has contrasted her urgent concerns about climate change with Scott’s refusal to vote for basic climate science and lifting regulations to curb global warming pollution. I’ve been trying.
Former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel Powell, Republican Sen. Rick Scott’s Democratic rival, spoke at a campaign event in Miami on Aug. 28 before starting a 75-stop tour across Florida.
Lynn Sladke/Associated Press
But Mucarsel-Powell campaigned this month in parts of Florida where hurricane winds blew tree limbs and trash and where tornadoes destroyed entire homes, making the situation difficult for homeowners. He said it opened his eyes to how desperate he was becoming.
“What these storms have done… is really waken people up to the fact that we’re experiencing increasingly severe weather events,” Mucarsel-Powell said between campaign stops. He spoke to HuffPost by phone from his car.
“It’s alarming that the climate is changing and no one is doing anything to reduce its effects,” she says. “Politicians are lying to too many Floridians by not giving Florida the right information and selling fraudulent insurance through the insurance companies they bring here.”
He said the Scott administration had failed to provide oversight of insurance companies, including examining whether companies had enough money to pay out large numbers of claims after major disasters, effectively making them “unregulated.” “No,” he said.
Once voters pointed out the connection between this devastation and the lack of affordable health care, they realized, “There will be strong opposition,” she says.
“This is borderline criminal,” she added. “People are so angry and frustrated and exhausted. Helen brought the flood. Then Milton made everything worse.”
A spokesperson for Scott’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Scott has faced backlash over environmental issues before.
Mr. Scott slashed environmental regulations, cutting funding to the Florida Department of Water Management by $700 million and setting the stage for a toxic algae outbreak that devastated fishing and coastal tourism in 2018. Scott’s critics skewered him with the nickname “Red Tide Rick.” The issue hurt Republicans in the polls. Mucarsel-Powell said similar disregard for the effects of climate change was on display when Scott lured speculative private insurance companies to states where coastal living has become more dangerous. .
“He was ‘Red Tide Rick’…People who have lived in Florida for a long time know him well,” Mucarsel-Powell said.
After Hurricane Milton, Joseph Guindy inspected the damage on Oct. 12 at the two-story waterfront home his family has owned for 20 years in Manasota Key, Florida.
“The homeowners insurance crisis we are currently facing started under Rick Scott,” she said.
Shortly after taking office in 2011, Scott signed a bill that eliminated the cap on national insurance premium increases, causing premiums to skyrocket.
So the public has launched a campaign to re-audit homes that state-licensed inspectors have already determined are ready for a major storm, as part of the process to qualify for insurance discounts. In 2012, the Tampa Bay Times reported that of the more than 250,000 homeowners reverified by the public, three in four lost their discounts.
The Scott administration then created additional incentives for private insurance companies to attract Citizens customers. The governor is moving the Florida Legislature to allow some insurance companies to manually select the lowest-risk plans from Citizens’ portfolio and allow homeowners to return to Citizens if private interest rates get too high. He even went so far as to veto a bill that passed unanimously.
More than half of the 25 companies approved to accept Citizens customers from 2013 to 2018 either left Florida, cut back on services or withdrew, state records show.Miami A new analysis by the Herald concludes that Scott’s efforts were “not creative”. Stable insurance market. ”
Of the 14 companies liquidated under state control over the past decade, all were insurance companies, and six have gone bankrupt in just the past two years, according to Florida government data.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), shown here, takes responsibility for Florida’s homeowners insurance crisis at a Donald Trump campaign event in Braselton, Ga., on Sept. 3. has been criticized in his re-election campaign.
Mike Stewart, via Associated Press
Meanwhile, some of the nation’s largest insurance companies have either pulled out of Florida or refused to renew tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of policies at a time. This forced homeowners to return to Citizen in droves, but this time with higher rates and worse coverage.
“I think most people know that the civil movement has not solved the problem,” DeSantis said at a press conference last March. “If a major hurricane were to hit a lot of civil property owners, the amount they would pay out would not be very high.”
In December, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee launched an investigation into whether Americans have enough money on hand to pay insurance claims in the event of future disasters.
At the time, citizens told CNN that paying all reserves and reinsurance after a major storm would result in “additional fees and charges to policyholders and all Florida policyholders until the deficit is eliminated.” “Florida law requires that the assessment be assessed.”
In 2021, Citizens announced that a once-in-100-year storm could expose Florida policyholders to “$24 billion in assessments added to their monthly premiums for years.” . But reinsurers predict that number could reach $162 billion as more homeowners turn to Citizens following the withdrawal of private insurers, CNN reported.
The Miami Herald reports that Scott said the main factors behind the rise in premiums include soaring housing costs due to post-COVID-19 inflation and the steady growth of expensive real estate in hurricane-prone areas. He pointed out that it was outside of his control.
Scott proposed a bill in August that would allow homeowners to deduct up to $10,000 in home insurance costs from their federal taxes. Meanwhile, Rep. Mucarsel-Powell supported a proposal by Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) to reduce the amount of reinsurance that reinsurance companies would have to purchase, making the cost more affordable for homeowners to insure. This will be passed on to you when you purchase.
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She also pledged to advocate for stronger building standards. The Biden administration is providing more than $1 billion to states to raise building codes for new homes and make homes and apartments more energy efficient and resilient to extreme weather. But the DeSantis administration refused to accept funding last year. And Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced a bill last year that would block the federal government from modernizing the building codes it uses to base mortgages.
Mucarsel-Powell said if elected, she would “talk to Marco Rubio” and work “together to provide solutions.” But he said tougher building standards are only part of the problem, and the federal government should stop lending to real estate developers building in areas expected to become more flooded as sea levels rise. Ta.
“Mortgages for new homes, developers who knowingly build in flood-prone areas, or build in states known to have experienced severe hurricanes. We need to take responsibility for providing loans to developers who are in need,” she said. . “That should have already changed years ago.”
He said Florida could first hold hearings to examine citizens’ finances and elect senators to vote on policies to crack down on companies taking advantage of the market.
“There needs to be oversight,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “And that will never happen under Rick Scott.”
