The Home Insurance Crisis Is Getting Even More Expensive

Just months after fires devastated parts of Los Angeles, one of the leading home insurers in California, State Farm, is temporarily raising rates 17 percent.

The sharp jump, after a 20 percent rate increase last year, is sure to strain family finances in what is already one of the nation’s most expensive states for home insurance.

It is also just the latest example of the indirect but increasingly costly ways that climate change is affecting the American economy.

An insurance crisis is spreading across the country as extreme weather and rising seas batter homes and businesses. As Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul reported throughout last year, insurance companies are pulling back coverage, homeowners are paying more and states are struggling to prop up an industry that is tottering as the planet rapidly heats up.

“Insurance is the climate crisis canary in the coal mine, and the canary is dying,” said Dave Jones, director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Law, Energy and the Environment.

Nowhere is the crisis more acute than in California.

Even before the fires struck Los Angeles, state officials were scrambling to stop insurers from abandoning the California market as wildfires grow more frequent and destructive.

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