Climate, Soil, Environmental Concerns

If global warming's impact on the environment isn't enough to get you to change your energy guzzling ways, maybe soaring homeowners insurance costs will get your attention.

Insurers typically raise rates, curtail coverage or stop writing policies in certain areas after a spate of bad weather or big disaster season and the 2005 hurricane seasons was no different.

Now in 2006 with droughts and fires in the West and Florida, floods in the Northeast, more hurricanes in the Gulf Coast and twisters down South this year -- not to mention what more Mother Nature will throw at the nation with a half year still to go -- the rising cost of homeowners insurance will spread financial disaster to more households, even those not in disaster areas.

Insurers aren't off the hook. Inaccurate risk modeling, decades of discounted rates and bad investments are part of the reason rates are rising.

And then there's global warming.

Global warming changes meteorological patterns and that typically spawns more severe weather. Earth's slow-simmer phenomenon has been blamed for the busy 2005 hurricane season, not to mention other weird weather patterns worldwide.

If scientists who weigh in on the human-factor side of the equation are right, then your carbon monoxide generating habits are contributing to higher insurance costs.

And it's not just the cost of insurance.

Lenders won't let you close on a home if you can't get coverage, no matter what the premium cost. Also, homes are less attractive as an investment if they come with prohibitively high homeowners insurance, limited coverage or coverage of last resort.

Florida's Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, for example, created in 2002 as insurance of last resort is now the second-largest insurer in the state carrying 70 percent of Miami-Dade County policies alone. Costs for the special coverage are higher than market rates to keep the government-sponsored entity non-competitive. Last year's hurricanes forced the state Legislature to bail Citizens out of the red. This summer the operation expects to become the largest homeowners' insurer in the Sunshine State, after two big back-to-back hurricane seasons.

Likewise, the National Flood Insurance Program and the California's Earthquake Authority in California are the only insurers that offer coverage for those events and the coverage is either expensive or stripped down or both. If a flood or earthquake takes your home, there's a chance it's value could exceed coverage limits.

And it's not just insurance to replace your home, but its contents, personal injury and coverage that pays for temporary shelter where you can hunker down while your home is being rebuilt.

The National Association of Realtors, in written testimony delivered to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity on June 28, said you'll pay for the cost of disasters again and again if a bad one hits and too many homeowners lack adequate coverage.

NAR supports legislation that would create a national disaster insurance program to offer affordable insurance and reduce circumstances under which insurance companies cancel policies.

"Options for obtaining and maintaining coverage for natural disasters are dwindling," said Thomas M. Stevens NAR president.

"America's hard-working families deserve a comprehensive federal natural disaster policy. If the 'big one' hits, and people are not insured, then the American taxpayer will pay the price," said Thomas M. Stevens, NAR president.

Go to the back of the line behind Social Security, immigration and the Iraq War for any such "national" attention.

Washington isn't paying attention now -- to either global warming or homeowners insurance -- so plan on paying through the nose later.

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