The Los Angeles wildfires that occurred early this year are still fresh in people's minds.
According to KPNX, the remembrance of the damage they caused is encouraging homeowners in Prescott, Arizona, to do everything they can to hold on to their home insurance.
What's happening?
Homeowners are being proactive in the face of the rising threat of wildfire and more insurers unwilling to insure homes in fire-prone areas.
Between 1990 and 2020, the number of homes in urban wildland interface zones in Yavapai County, where Prescott is located, increased by 126%, as 12 News observed. Because of this housing growth and long-term drought conditions, the community is more at risk for wildfires than ever before.
Many homeowners are getting fire risk assessments in an effort to obtain less expensive coverage (or retain any coverage at all), a process where someone comes to assess the likelihood of fire occurring around their home. The assessor will make recommendations to improve conditions, such as removing fire fuel, changing the landscape, and making home improvements.
However, a fire risk assessment doesn't guarantee an insurer will offer insurance coverage. As such, roughly 12% of homeowners in the Prescott area have chosen to go without home insurance at all.
Conrad Jackson, a local fire risk manager, told 12 News: "Some of them are choosing to roll the dice. The way things have gone, if your insurance has gone up 20% in the last year, you are lucky. I know many whose insurance is up 100%."
Why is this concerning?
As human activity, like the burning of dirty energy, continues to increase global temperatures and cause more extreme weather, global conditions continue to be ripe for wildfires and other natural disasters.
Wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding can all cause immense damage to the communities they hit, so the steep rise in home insurance rates could cause more people to forgo insurance altogether.
This means that when extreme weather destroys property, individuals will have to deal with damage-related costs themselves, making owning a home more expensive than ever before.
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No way 😨 This added financial burden of homeownership could make owning a home less appealing for people. As fewer people move to communities and purchase houses, those communities' economies could suffer.
What's being done about Arizona insurance premiums?
KNXV reported in February that the Arizona Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions put together a Resiliency and Mitigation Council at the end of 2024 to investigate the affordability of home insurance, how extreme weather events affect these, and strategies to decrease the risk of property loss due to these events.
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