Home insurance unaffordable for many, leaving them exposed to big losses

(InvestigateTV) — A report by the Consumer Federation of America shows that over 6 million homeowners lack homeowners insurance, leaving them unprotected from national disasters and other significant damages that might happen to their homes.

Sharon Cornelissen, Director of Housing, and Douglas Heller, Director of Insurance, with Consumer Federation of America understand how critical homeowners’ insurance is.

It is why they worked hard to get this report published.

“This translates in around $1.6 trillion in uninsured homes nationwide,” Cornelissen said.

Cornelissen said part of the problem is due to premiums increasing over the last few years, leaving some homeowners to make very difficult decisions.

“You know, they have to choose between, you know, paying your health care bills, getting, you know, their groceries on the table, paying their mortgage,” she noted.

Their study also found that homeowners making less than $50,000 a year are twice as likely to be uninsured. Homeowners of color are disproportionally at risk with an estimated 22% of Native American, 14% of Hispanic and 11% of black homeowners having no homeowners insurance.

“Communities of color are more often located in high rent, high risk areas,” Cornelissen pointed out. “So they may be more vulnerable to flooding, for example, or they may be more located in the path of hurricanes. So that also drives up prices more in those communities and makes more people go uninsured.”

Heller said public data on homeowners’ insurance remains incomplete and the insurance industry has resisted efforts to make this much-needed information available and transparent. In the meantime, if homeowners find themselves in a bind he suggested reaching out to the state’s insurance commissioner.

“Most people don’t know that they have an insurance commissioner in their state, but there is an insurance commissioner whose job is to make sure that the policies that insurance companies sell us are constructed in a way that’s fair, that the prices are not excessive, and that they don’t are not unfairly discriminatory,” Heller observed.

Heller advised homeowners to think about the type of deductibles they can receive out of different insurance plans and to and shop around.

He said the fight for the uninsured is important to everyone.

“If we don’t have that, the economy shuts down, homeownership shuts down,” he said. “And so it’s so important that we make sure this works.”

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