Helene and Milton reveal Florida’s hopeless home insurance disaster – Reckon

It wasn’t too long ago that a home insurance crisis meant that private providers were leaving disaster-hit states or premiums were excessively expensive, forcing people to sell up and, in some cases, move somewhere less risky.

But now, after over 20 years of increasingly expensive weather-related disasters and rising premiums, the home insurance crisis is all-encompassing. Hurricane Helene and Milton, hitting two weeks apart to create a historically deadly and costly disaster, have exposed homeowners to the gaping weaknesses of a home insurance market unprepared for the chaos and unpredictability of extreme weather.

Front and center of that problem is Florida, where rates have doubled and tripled between 2020 and 2024, with some paying five—and six-digit annual home insurance rates. Homeowners are fighting with insurance companies, while more people rely on of

“It’s an extraordinarily difficult situation when you don’t have a functional insurance market,” said David Marlett, the managing director of the Brantley Risk & Insurance Center at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “Private insurance companies just don’t want to partake in that level of risk, meaning communities just can’t rebuild and recover in the way they once could.”

Home insurance companies could once rely heavily on their insurers, known as reinsurance, but their risks and costs have also increased because of weather-related disasters in other countries.

In Florida, the higher costs have led to cascading effects. It has pressured lenders and real estate as valuations drop and people owe more on their homes than their worth. Stricter building regulations and soaring rebuilding costs due to inflation further complicate the issue, leaving state-backed plans as an expensive, limited option. As a result, many are fleeing high-risk areas, unable to manage rising costs and extreme weather.

While this national crisis has materialized for most of the last five years, Florida has dealt with it for over 30 years.

“Florida’s home insurance market has struggled, really, since 1992 with Hurricane Andrew,” Marlett said. “That has progressively seen the larger or established national insurance companies withdraw from the market, and more people get their coverage from a state-run program called citizens.”

Home insurance companies, including State Farm, Allstate, Farmers, Progressive, and AAA, have exited or reduced coverage in states like California, Texas, Florida, and Louisiana due to extreme weather disaster risks, litigation, and regulatory challenges. This has left homeowners with fewer options and significantly higher premiums.

American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) members gathered in Chicago on Oct. 6 to tackle the industry’s biggest issues. The organization represents 60% of all insurers in the country.

While APCIA president and CEO David A. Sampson acknowledged the destruction of Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton’s impending arrival on Florida’s west coast, and the insurance industry crisis, he emphasized that insurance’s societal role remained a source of “stability, safety, and protection” for American families, businesses, and communities.

“We get up every day to protect our customers from the chaos that comes on the wind of a storm,” he added.

Category 5 Hurricane Andrew caused $27 billion in damage, the costliest hurricane in U.S. history by a long way at that time. It wasn’t until Katrina caused $125 billion in 2005 that Andrew was surpassed.

Since then, there has been a relentless string of catastrophic hurricanes, including Irma, Maria, and Harvey, all coming in 2017, costing over $200 billion. The combined damage from Helene and Milton is expected to be as costly.

During that time, the state-backed insurer of last resort Citizens saw its membership grow substantially, from 1.1 million in 2022 to nearly 2 million today.

But some are willing to gamble. Millions are left uninsured or underinsured, believing they won’t experience catastrophic events. According to the Insurance Information Institute, only about 25% of residents in areas of Florida affected by the storm had flood insurance. That figure plummets into the single digits for homeowners in Appalachia. Flood coverage in Asheville, North Carolina, was 1%.

Overall, the number of homeowners with no home insurance is likely to increase between 2021 and 2024, according to a March 2024 report by the Consumer Federation of America. The report notes that one in 13 homes, or 7.4%, has no home insurance. Those risks are borne among low-income communities of color, particularly Hispanics and Native Americans. According to the report, most have no mortgage or live in manufactured homes.

While Florida ranks in the top 10 states with 10% uninsured people, the Miami Metropolitan area is the highest in the country with 15%. Mississippi ranks first, ahead of New Mexico and Louisiana.

But it hardly matters if you have home insurance or not. Home insurance companies are categorizing Hurricane Helene and Milton as two separate events, meaning anyone who did not or could not document damage from Helene could face even greater odds that their claim will be denied if they were hit by both storms, leaving people to bear the costs alone, according to Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications for the Insurance Information Institute, who spoke with NBC News.

That has left some homeowners upset.

“After my homeowners insurance completely denied coverage for the wind and water damage from Hurricane Milton, we just learned that FEMA is also denying any assistance—nothing at all,” said one man of Hillsborough County in west-central Florida in a Facebook post showing the severe flood to his home. “The inspector left, and we were left with nothing.”

He added: “Rely on yourself, that is truly all you can count on.”

A resident in Hialeah, near Miami, said that she sustained minimal damage but was angry about Florida’s general state of insurance.

“I have damage to my home that needs repair, but there are many Floridians that lost everything, and yet these corrupt insurance companies who have taken our money for years on end fail to come to our need in this time of disaster,” she wrote on Facebook, adding that she would commit her vote to whomever solves helps fix the crisis. “When Hurricane Irma came through, you denied my claims, then Ian, Helene, now Milton, and still no answers.”

Denied or low payouts have also become an issue in recent years. A 60 Minutes special aired Sept. 29 revealed that many Florida homeowners faced drastically reduced insurance payouts for storm damage, with some claims cut by as much as 70-90%, according to whistleblowers. The segment highlighted the case of a couple whose initial claim of $231,368 was lowered to just $15,469.

Many appealed and filed lawsuits. The Florida legislature passed new laws to improve transparency in the claims process and hold insurers accountable. But they also made it harder to file suit, which could be disastrous for those trying to recover from Helen and Milton.

Back in 2022, Florida represented just 9% of home insurance claims nationwide but 79% of lawsuits against providers, costing companies $3 billion in 2019. The state found many claims fraudulent, so the state legislature passed laws in 2023 that made it harder to sue home insurance providers. Lawmakers hoped that the new law would tempt insurance companies back to the state, freeing up the purse strings to offer lower premiums and lift the burden off the state-backed Citizens program.

But it’s yet to be seen.

Over the last year, the average cost of homeowners insurance in Florida has increased by more than 40%. Three out of four have seen their insurance increase, while one in eight have had their policy canceled.

And viable solutions to the crisis that satisfy politicians and insurance companies are thin on the ground.

“It’s just a system that’s not working,” said Marlett. “This piecemeal approach of separating perils like flood in one policy, wind, fire, and extra cover to get earthquakes and landslides, that really isn’t covered anywhere, are not effective. We need to basically have one policy with broad coverage and probably have some sort of federal backstop. And make it much easier for the consumer to understand.”

Why hasn’t that happened yet?

“Congress,” added Marlett.