In 2025, while Gayle Ali and her husband were out of the country, their Altadena home was destroyed in the Eaton Fire.

They changed their flights and rushed home.

“We knew our house had burned down and that we lost our cars and we lost everything,” said Ali, 69, who had lived in the home with her husband, Rasheed, 71, for more than 30 years.

What came next, she said, was another kind of shock.

The couple had been with the same insurance company for four decades, insuring their cars, rental properties, and eventually their home. After the fire reduced the house to ash, Ali said the company paid only a percentage of their personal property coverage and required them to itemize every possession in every room to receive more.

“They know that when they went to my house, all they saw was ash,” Ali said. 

No one from the company had ever contacted them to suggest increasing coverage as home values rose.

Now, she and her husband faced a big difference between their home’s purchase price, its insured value, and what it would cost to rebuild today.

Ali told her story Feb. 5 at the state Capitol, where Sen. Scott Wiener introduced Senate Bill 982, the Affordable Insurance and Recovery Act or AIR Act.

Wiener described California’s insurance market as “an absolute economic and social crisis for California.”

“We have homeowners who simply cannot afford insurance and who are taking huge risks as a result,” he said.

Weiner explained that home insurance costs in California have gone up nearly 30% above inflation in the past decade, and some areas have seen increases as high as 150%. At the same time, private insurers are not renewing a record number of policies, so more homeowners are turning to the state’s FAIR Plan, which in most cases is the insurance seeker’s last resort.

The California FAIR Plan Association was established to meet the needs of the state’s homeowners who can’t find insurance in the traditional marketplace. The FAIR Plan now covers almost $700 billion in property, which is a 317% increase since 2021. It is asking to raise rates by more than 35% after paying more than $3.5 billion for just two Los Angeles fires last year.

“Needless to say, Californians cannot afford this, and it is not sustainable,” Wiener said.

The Affordable Insurance and Recovery Act would let the state attorney general sue large oil and gas companies to recover costs from disasters made worse by climate change. This includes wildfire and flood losses paid by the FAIR Plan and higher premiums for private policyholders.

“With Californians paying such a massive cost for climate-related disasters, we have to ask who is not paying,” Wiener said. “The answer is fossil fuel corporations.”

Supporters say that extreme weather disasters, like the 2025 Los Angeles fires that caused more than $52 billion in losses, are made worse by climate change from fossil fuel emissions. Decades of scientific evidence, including studies by oil and gas companies, show that fossil fuels contribute to global warming.

“The cost of home insurance is shooting through the roof and more families are getting rejected by private insurers,” Wiener said. “The AIR Act takes an innovative approach by shifting the cost of wildfires and other climate-driven disasters from the survivors to the fossil fuel giants most responsible.”

For Marisa Aguayo, who was affected by a flood in San Diego, the crisis continued even after the water was gone.

“After the floods, my life was turned upside down overnight,” Aguayo said. “Insurance didn’t cover everything, and the costs didn’t stop when the water receded. For survivors, there is no pause or reset. We’re still rebuilding, still paying, still trying to stay rooted.”

Elisa Jacobs Nixon, whose Altadena home was left unlivable by toxic smoke and debris, said the bill is about accountability.

“This insurance affordability bill is critical because it starts to shift the burden off of survivors and holds to account the billion-dollar businesses responsible for driving these disasters in the first place,” she said.

Mary Creasman, CEO of California Environmental Voters, said that everyone except oil companies carries the burden right now.

“Rate payers are paying, working families are paying, the government’s paying, insurance companies paying,” she said.

A poll conducted by Binder Research found that 92% of California voters consider reducing home insurance costs and ensuring the availability of policies important, with 62% rating it very important. Two-thirds of likely voters support requiring corporations to offset climate-driven insurance increases, according to bill sponsors.

Independent economic modeling cited by supporters suggests that if similar litigation had succeeded over the past decade, it could have generated $62 billion in compensation for California homeowners and businesses, an average net benefit of $3,800 per insured household, and potentially created up to 340,000 jobs.

“California’s insurance crisis is in large part the predictable cost of extreme weather disasters driven by fossil fuel pollution,” said Robert Herrell, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California. “Giving California the authority to recover disaster costs from the companies causing the harm is basic economic accountability and smart risk management for taxpayers.”

Ali said she hopes lawmakers move quickly, even though she knows change often takes time.

“This is the United States; bills move slowly,” she said.

Still, she and other supporters of the bill feel confident it will pass.

“I’m hoping that there is some urgency,” Ali said. “I can only pray.”

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