Wildfire risk leaves Californians without homeowners insurance

Grappling with a climate emergency, insurance companies say they can't pay for catastrophic losses.

By Katherine Chiglinsky and Elaine Chen | December 07, 2020 at 11:48 AM

A sign warns of elevated fire danger in the Oakland Hill area of Oakland, California, U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 29. 2020. (Photo: Philip Pacheco/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) — Acquiring home insurance has long been a mundane but necessary chore. In California, for hundreds of thousands of residents, it’s turned into a labyrinthine quest that leaves people with expensive, bare-bones coverage. That’s because an increasing amount of Californians have been dropped by their regular insurers after years of devastating wildfires that cost billions of dollars and upended the market.

The problem has been getting worse. In October, California’s insurance regulator reported that insurers refused to renew 235,250 home insurance policies in 2019, a 31% increase from the prior year. In ZIP codes that had a moderate to very high fire risk, non-renewals jumped 61%.

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