California families are bearing the brunt of the nationwide insurance bust

By Marcela Cranford, especially for CalMatters

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I haven’t lost my home to a forest fire. I lost my owner’s insurance on one.

The letter arrived without much explanation, a notice from my insurance company that my policy would not be renewed. The reason, they said, is simple: The program is no longer available in California because increasing frequency and intensity of forest fires. No appeal. No alternatives are offered. Just a deadline and a warning that coverage will be gone soon.

This house was never just an investment for my family. My mother worked hard to afford it, making sacrifices so we could have stability. For her, this home represented safety and progress, something solid to pass on to her daughter. Now what once felt like a source of pride feels increasingly like a responsibility shaped by forces far beyond my control.

What happened to me is not uncommon anymore. In California and across the country, weather disasters are destabilizing the home insurance market. Insurers raise premiums much faster than inflationcanceling policies or leaving entire states altogether as wildfires and similar natural disasters become more frequent and destructive. Only in California, nearly 400,000 insurance policies have been cancelled from 2021

After the devastating Palisades fire in 2025, insurers is facing about $40 billion in claims. Their response was not to stay and adapt; it was yes pull back even more. Homeowners were left scrambling, forced to make expensive last-resort plans or pushed out of coverage altogether.

Insurance companies exist to assess risk. But climate change has made that risk too unpredictable. What were once considered once-in-a-generation disasters now occur every year. Federal data shows disaster declarations related to climate events have doubled compared to historical averages, while insurance premiums across the country have grown nearly 9% faster than inflation between 2018 and 2022.

The math that once underpinned the insurance system doesn’t work the way it used to.

When insurance fails, the consequences spread quickly. Homes without coverage can become unmortgaged. Property values ​​are falling. Communities that have stood for decades are beginning to empty out.

Families are forced to make impossible choices: accept skyrocketing premiums, take catastrophic financial risk, or leave communities they’ve built for decades. For many homeowners, the fear isn’t just losing coverage, it’s knowing that if disaster strikes without it, recovery may be impossible.

This is the fear that keeps me awake at night.

If rates continue to rise or coverage becomes even more difficult to find, I worry that I could be one wildfire away from financial ruin—not because I was careless, but because the system designed to protect people like me is falling apart. This fear is most acute for moderate and low-income families, but it doesn’t stop there.

Across the country, rising insurance costs are already forcing homeowners to make painful trade-offs about where — and whether — they can afford to live. Young families are considering buying their first home. Retirees are weighing whether they can afford to stay. The crisis is expanding.

This is not just an environmental problem. It is economic. Residential. One stability. It affects everything from mortgage markets to municipal budgets to family financial security.

Yet homeowners are the ones who must shoulder the costs of a crisis we did not create.

Climate change didn’t arrive for me as a headline; arrived as a cancellation notice. without meaningful and bold decisionsmillions more will face the same reality.

We need stronger protections for homeowners. We need to fix broken insurance markets. And we must make those who fueled this crisis help cover its consequences.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.