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.
For those that live in those areas, sadly you have really two choices. Move. Or go without insurance.
It sucks but that’s reality. The government couldn’t even afford to cover those homes. If it were one home in a danger zone then it would be feasible. But with the number of homes, businesses and other buildings it just isn’t feasible. We need to start working to get these people out of there. If we start now it can in theory be done but the longer we wait the more impossible it will become.
I’m sure you know we’re not going to do the right thing for anyone in the coming years. We won’t do anything to avoid the disaster and we won’t give a shit when disaster strikes others either. Greed and selfishness will be the end of us. We’ll all just say “Thank God it wasn’t me” until eventually it is.
Very true
Absolutely prophetic.
Tell us you’re from the USA without telling us you’re from the USA.
True, but show me the country prepared to protect its citizens from the consequences of climate change. There isn’t one.
I think the Dutch are prepared for rising sea levels.
Man whenever a hurricane is in the gulf and my family is all like “pray it doesn’t come our way” I’m just like… so you’re asking God to ruin someone else’s life? Shit is insane.
Laughs in Dutch Deltaworks.
The government would easily be able to fix this, by properly protecting the city from the ocean by building adequate protection measures. But it failed to do so… and this is the result. The constituents voted for short term cost savings over long term viability of some of their large population centers.
Unfortunately we don’t currently have a Dutch government that believes in climate change, luckily our water defense is managed by an even older branch of government that does still know it’s core function.
Bold of you to assume that the coral basin of Florida an Louisiana would not let water bubble up from the soil as it rises.
Why? It’s not as if this problem is unique. Other environments, other challenges. It’s not as if that is not a solvable issue.
You just reminded me that there’s a version of Pandemic inspired by this, it’s actually really fun
Wow, their brand really is “visions of the future” now isn’t it?
Cool! I just went online and bought a copy. Had not heard of it, but it seems fun.
This is the thing I wish we could see more of. Why are people stuck on this idea that they have a “right” to live in the spaces even though the economics say otherwise? It’s time to rebuild our urban cores and keep everyone out of the forests except for recreation.
You have a right to live there. I have no problem with people living in these areas.
What I disagree with is the expectation that the rest of society pay for that right when it’s an area that you know will get damaged.
With insurance (not that I’m in favor of private enterprise profiting off your potential for catastrophe) that cost was spread out over you and your neighbors, maybe even some of the rest of the insurers customers, with increased premiums.
But if you choose to stay in a known disaster-prone area where homes are expected to be wrecked fairly regularly, society (the taxpayer) shouldn’t be on the hook for that.
(I say “fairly regularly” I don’t mean someplace that might get a random tornado, but places that are regularly impacted by hurricanes such as the East/southeastern coastal areas, flooding along the Mississippi, etc.)
I’m not sure about Louisiana but where I live, you can’t get a mortgage if you can’t get insurance. That means in order to move, you have to find a buyer that will pay cash.
Otherwise you’re screwed.
They could form a co-op and insure each other. Except the insurance companies bought state legislators (at rock-bottom prices!) and made that illegal.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I like when people think outside of the box
but let’s think about that concept.
you , myself, and 22 others live in a high risk flood zone. the insurance companies won’t insure us because of the high risk.
if we (the 24) try to insure ourselves, there is no way to gather enough premiums to offset the losses.
think about it, the insurance companies will insure LARGE numbers of homes. then use the premiums to pay for losses on a few of those homes. so when someones house burns down or gets destroyed by a flood there is money in the bank to cover the loss. but since it is a smaller number of people putting in premiums, there is a smaller amount of money in the pot to cover the loss.
all the homes are in a high risk flood zone, it wouldn’t take much for all the homes (in the co-op) to be destroyed in the same flood to wipe out the pile of cash and not have a way to rebuild.
i like your idea but the end result makes in a solution that just won’t work. sorry.
While I agree with your assessment this is a statement about mitigating the damages of climate change that has been repeated for at least 40+ years. And… well… we’ve seen how well that’s turned out.
I was under the impression that insurance was needed to secure a mortgage. I live in an area that doesn’t have these issues but my mortgage provider was very clear to me that home insurance was a requirement of the mortgage. Maybe it was the mortgage provider I used? I thought everyone had that requirement. I live in an area with just about zero natural disaster concern or climate change concern.
In most cases it is. And since the insurance company won’t insure the property basically becomes unsellable
Which areas? There’s almost nowhere that coverage won’t be a problem because of climate change within the next decade.
There are areas that will be much worse. In Minnesota we will see some issues but trust me, we basically won’t see massive flooding. The tornadoes might and probably will get worse but we won’t see entire towns removed because of flooding or massive fires. Iowa, North and South Dakota, Wisconsin will also be fine.
It’s low lying coastal area that will get crushed. Also going to (for example) the East side of California could be problem areas. We will have to live in a smaller section of area.
Not sure who downvoted you though
Tornadoes have definitely destroyed entire towns. And recently. So I would say Minnesota is at risk from that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_Kentucky_tornado
As for who downvoted me… probably some idiot who doesn’t believe in climate change.
Fair enough entire towns have been wiped out. Can’t argue that but on the big picture side of things, I’d say coastal areas are going to get hit way worse
Way worse for sure. I’m just pointing out that almost everywhere will have to deal with climate disasters bad enough that it will destroy the home insurance industry.
And going without insurance typically isn’t an option if you have a mortgage
A problem that solves itself. We don’t have to do anything.
I wonder how hard would it be to start a local co-op insurance company. I know next to nothing about finances or insurance, but I bet there’s a way to do it.
Insurance is all about socializing the cost of recovery (and taking a cut for yourself on the way) by getting a pool of people to pay in. If all the people in the pool are in a small, flood-prone area, the costs would likely be no different than no insurance. You have to get the pool to include people that will never file a claim to help cover the others.
Right, I was more thinking along the lines of a community effort to help each other in case of disaster. With that said, moving out of a high risk zone is definitely the smarter move IMO
Could you? Yes.
But you wouldn’t want to insure anyone or anything in those high risk zones. You’d go broke.