Florida Home Insurers Disproportionately Dropping Low-Income Households

Home insurance companies are refusing to renew policies for many Florida homeowners, putting some of the state’s poorest residents at higher risk for losses. According to reporting by Amy Green and  Peter Aldhous for Inside Climate News, the growing risk from increasingly violent storms is prompting insurance companies to raise rates sharply or stop offering coverage in some states altogether.

According to an analysis by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget, non-renewal rates spiked in 2022 and 2023 in counties facing the highest risk of climate-related disasters, and Florida had the highest non-renewal rate in the nation in both years. Yet the highest rates were not in coastal counties but in rural inland counties. Based on their own analysis, Inside Climate News claims that “non-renewals were highest in the Florida counties where climate-related hazards are compounded by poverty and other factors that make it harder to withstand and recover from extreme weather events.”

In other words, “The situation means that the homeowners who are most at risk of losing insurance are those with the least resources for dealing with disasters, and with no insurance they are even more exposed.”