Allstate has received approval to raise its California homeowners insurance premiums by an average of 34% starting in November — the largest rate increase this year amid the state’s insurance crisis.
The rate increase approved earlier this month by state regulators affects more than 350,000 policyholders statewide and exceeds a
30% increase sought in June by State Farm, the state’s largest homeowners’ insurer. That request is still under review.
Thousands of California homeowners are set to lose fire coverage on their properties as the Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Company continues non-renewing policies for those in at-risk areas of the state.
The insurer, one of Liberty Mutual's California subsidiaries, is in the process of refusing renewal for 17,000 homeowners in the state holding "dwelling fire insurance" policies with the company. The non-renewals, according to filings with the California Department of Insurance, started in September 2023 and will last through November.
In his 1998 book,
Ecology of Fear, Mike Davis, the late California muckraker and self-proclaimed Marxist environmentalist, made the case for “letting Malibu burn.” He pointed out that the city of Los Angeles devoted more resources to dealing with the wildfires that rage in the wealthy enclave of Malibu than to the ones that break out in downtown tenements. And yet, Malibu’s very design ensures the return of fire. “The Malibu nouveaux riches built higher and higher in the mountain chamise with scant regard for the inevitable fiery consequences,” he writes. Why not return to the wisdom of native Californians, who knew that small, controlled fires were necessary for preventing bigger ones?
