The home insurance market is crumbling. These owners are paying the price | CNN Business
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The home insurance market is crumbling in New Orleans, leaving Alfredo Herrera with few options for coverage — and skyrocketing insurance premiums.

The home insurance market is crumbling in New Orleans, leaving Alfredo Herrera with few options for coverage — and skyrocketing insurance premiums.

Herrera, 35, works in finance for a local bank. He bought his 900-square-foot home in New Orleans’ Mid-City neighborhood in 2020 for $270,000, and lives there with his partner.

In 2022, he paid $1,600 a year for home insurance. But last July, his insurer canceled his coverage, saying it was leaving Louisiana.

In the past, acquiring or keeping homeowners’ insurance didn’t present much of a problem.

But as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather, insurers — especially those in areas most impacted by floods and fires — are raising their premiums, or pulling out altogether, impacting the affordability and availability of home and fire insurance.

  • snekerpimp@lemmy.world
    322·
    9 months ago

    It’s almost like the insurance industry is unsustainable in a world where catastrophe is the norm.

      • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
        71·
        9 months ago

        The real answer is that people should be able to afford to fix their house, even after a disaster.

        The fact that anyone in the bottom 90% probably cant shows how expensive it is to just LIVE in this capitalist nightmare.

        Its unfathomable to most to be able to own a new car from just saving money while working at a shitty job for a few months, but it was ~60 years ago.

        Also modern mortgages only came along because of the “brilliant” minds during the 1970s who invented MBS and started the contemporary downfall of American housing.

        Inflation is the tool of the top 0.1%, and it works by squeezing the bottom 99.9% slowly and meticulously over decades.

      • snekerpimp@lemmy.world
        5·
        9 months ago

        I agree with you in the notion that insurance is a scam, but seeing how US government is swayed by special interests, 0.1%ers and conglomerate corporations, I’m sure it would be a money hole like the military budget.

      • Fal@yiffit.netEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        After decades of record profits theyre called to provide the service theyve been selling

        What? Are you suggesting they haven’t paid out any claims previously?

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      71·
      9 months ago

      Exactly. It won’t be long before there will be very few places where insuring homes that aren’t at risk of weather disasters due to climate change will be possible.

    • paraphrand@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      We need a law that returns part of their premiums when a company takes them and runs off.

      I know this isn’t logical in the broken system. But it rings true on a human level.