Before a forest fire ravaged its street in the northwest of Altadena, Louise Hamlin and Chris Wilson lived next to each other in almost identical houses.
“I chose an old house in an old neighborhood because he has a soul,” said Hamlin, a 51 -year -old single mother with a teenager, who bought him a house of 1,500 square feet ago 10 years.
Today, the charming English -style cottages left in 1925 with welcoming porches and palladian windows. In the middle of the rubble and ashes, there is little of their historic district.
During the weeks following the Eaton forest track, Hamlin and Wilson stumbled through the strata of business, bureaucracy and emotional trauma to survive a natural disaster, the views firmly fixed to reconstruction.
The way they sail on reconstruction is a story of contrasting fortunes and unequal recovery which reveals the country’s growing insurance crisis. Her insurance has already paid nearly a million dollars and she is looking for entrepreneurs. He plans to loans, prosecution and move his family from California.
Jae C. Hong / AP
“This changes the whole trajectory to your life,” said Wilson, 44, who bought his house five years ago with his wife, six months’ pregnant from their first child.
Hamlin’s house was covered by private by Mercury Insurance, but Wilson was forced to access the access to California insurance requirements – the state insurance program – when Safeco refused to Repeat his police last May. The fair plan provides people who cannot obtain private coverage but who need insurance as a condition of their mortgage.
As forest fires, hurricanes and other natural disasters become more frequent due to climate change, many owners find it difficult to find or allow private insurance. The problem is particularly acute in California, where some large insurance companies have ceased to write new policies or refuse to renew those existing.
State officials have recently started to deploy new regulations to encourage insurers to stay in California, with the hope of obtaining as many owners as possible outside the fair plan.
Fair, with its high premiums and basic coverage, was designed as a temporary safety net until the insured find a more permanent option. However, the number of residential policies of the fair plan has more than doubled from 2020 to 2024, reaching nearly 452,000 policies last year.
For Wilson and Hamlin, their parallel reconstruction trips serve as edifying tale. Wilson paid almost 60% more bonuses linked to fire than Hamlin, for less than half of the coverage.
“This is why many people call it” the faded plan “, said Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer defense group United Parkdrsers.
Safeco’s parent company, Liberty Mutual, said in a statement that it could not comment on any individual policy but recognized “difficult but deliberate commercial decisions” in California.
Mercury did not respond to requests for comments.
Janet Ruiz, spokesperson for Insurance Information Institute, which represents many major insurance companies, said that California was lucky to have the fair plan, which is necessary to accept everyone. Ruiz said the results would be even worse if the owners had no coverage.
The Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said that California endeavors to ensure that all complaints are paid. He said in a press release that his office was trying to withdraw the owners from the fair plan and return to the more complete traditional insurance coverage.
A spokesperson for Fair Plan refused to comment on Wilson’s case and noted that it was difficult to compare policies and coverage.
Thousands of people lost their house in Eaton fires and near the Palisades, which were among the most destructive in the history of California.
The fair plan said it has expanded the staff to meet the growing demand and set up a financing mechanism to pay all the complaints covered. State data show that more than 31,000 forest fire complaints were filed last week, including around 4,400 complaints under the fair plan.
Hamlin had a standard full home insurance, with an annual police bonus of $ 1,264 at the time of the fire. It can receive up to 1.5 million dollars to replace your house, other structures and personal property, including up to $ 303,000 for subsistence costs when displaced. His policy gives him a right to coverage that could add more than $ 200,000 to help him rebuild.
Wilson, on the other hand, pays a bonus of $ 2,000 for the fair plan which fixes its maximum payment at $ 686,000, including $ 100,000 for subsistence costs while being moved.
Wilson also had to buy “enveloping insurance” for $ 1,500 a year for the emissions that the fair plan does not cover, such as burst pipes or falling objects. This additional plan does not cover fire damage.
Hamlin said Mercury’s support was exceptional, immediately sending his money and helping with the next steps such as finding accommodation and obtaining entrepreneur quotes. In a few days, the company has won its tens of thousands of dollars to start while the process was set up.
“Being able to rest at night and wake up and manage everything else is really important,” said Hamlin.
Meanwhile, Wilson had a hard time speaking to a representative of the fair plan. There was no communication in the first two weeks, the contact details were incorrectly listed, the phone numbers did not have voicemail and the emails rebounded.
“Half of time, I feel like doing something wrong,” said Wilson.
After the Associated Press contacted comments, the spokesperson for the insurance service Michael Soller said that a representative would contact Wilson directly.
Wilson said he feels haunted by his choices. He thought he had bought a property in a low -risk area and had avoided looking for houses in another district further north after hearing that people had been abandoned by their insurers.
Hamlin was also aware of the risk of fire when she moved. She lived before in Pasadena and was surprised that State Farm, her insurance company, does not offer her coverage in Altadena. She chose Mercury because it was the cheapest option and planned to continue an even more robust coverage.
“I could have been abandoned when Chris was abandoned. Any of us could be at any time. It’s just luck, really. It is nothing that I did or did not do it, ”said Hamlin, amazed by comparison. “I had the same risk factors as everyone.”
Stephen Collier, professor of town planning at the University of California in Berkeley, said that the apparently random nature of who is abandoned and when to do with the complex risk models of insurance companies.
“They all try to manage their exhibition,” said necklace. “If you think of forest fires, you don’t want a concentrated exposure.”
Wilson said Safeco had asked for an inspection of his property before deciding not to renew his policy. Pancked, he tried without success to negotiate with them, offering to release brushes, cut the trees near the roof and other efforts to attenuate forest fires.
Wilson did aggressively shopping with his insurance agent but in vain, and resigned himself to the Fair Plan, assuming that he would end up finding private insurance again.
There was another socket: Wilson said he couldn’t get a complete replacement costs on the equitable level because his roof was too old. Instead, he ended up with what is called the coverage of “real cash value”, which considerably limits payment according to the physical depreciation of what was lost.
“We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars and it’s very, very painful,” said Bach of the insured of United.
Quoting the increase in fire risks and other problems, seven of the 12 main insurance companies have taken a break or limited of new cases in California in 2023. State regulations give insurers more latitude to increase Premiums in exchange for emitting policies in high -risk areas, including climate examination change of premiums and adoption of reinsurance costs to consumers.
But these are only short -term solutions, said Dave Jones, California Insurance Commissioner from 2011 to 2018. He underlined Florida, where officials “did everything that insurers asked California” but has been very successful.
“We regularly walk to an unbeatable future in the United States because we are not doing quickly enough to approach the underlying cause, which is climate change,” said Jones.
Unless the governments take the financial burden of serious mitigation efforts, the price of the California fire risk will remain unequal and left to the owners, said UC Berkeley collar. This could be the undereated – like Wilson – swallowing their personal losses, or all California owners are collectively at bonuses with increased bonuses, or both. State Farm, the largest insurance company in California, this week urged the State to approve an increase in emergency rates of 22% for owners’ policies from May after having processed nearly 8,700 complaints and paid more than a billion dollars to the insured for fires in Los Angeles.
“There is a huge amount of risks in the system and there is a big question of who will pay for this,” said collar.
Wilson expects him to contract loans to rebuild. He plans to join a legal action against southern California Edison which alleges that the equipment of the public service has triggered the fire, in the hope of receiving settlement money.
But with a baby en route, Wilson said he couldn’t understand to live in the limbo on a fair level, and he was thinking of leaving California if private insurance remains out of reach.
“I don’t want to have to be ready to lose everything again,” said Wilson. “Stuck to pay insurance that does not cover anything. You don’t want to live in a risky area. You don’t have the safety net.
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Aaron Kessler’s data journalist Aaron Kessler in Washington, DC, contributed.