CSAC’s Executive Director Graham Knaus was recently quoted
in a New York Times article regarding the issue of
homeowner’s insurance in California. The article was written by
Christopher Flavelle, who specializes in reporting on the impacts
of climate change on financial instruments including bonds,
mortgages, home prices and insurance.
The article focused on the status of California’s insurance
market and the impact that climate change has had on the
availability of homeowners insurance in the wildland urban
interface (WUI). Flavelle was interested in CSAC’s support of
AB 2167 (Daly) which would have created an Insurance Market
Assistance Plan program in California to allow the Insurance
Commissioner to approve reasonable rates in high fire threat
counties based on insurer solvency, mitigation efforts, and other
factors.
CSAC supported the bill as a reasonable market based solution to
help increase insurance availability, while at the same time
protecting California consumers in high fire threat areas. AB
2167 was supported by a variety of stakeholders, but was
significantly scaled down in Senate Appropriations to become a
two year study bill. CSAC will continue to monitor efforts that
attempt to improve the availability of insurance in the WUI.
