In the Face of Escalating Insurance Premiums, Florida Homeowners Band Together En Masse
South Florida homeowners are banding together in an effort to fight rising property insurance premiums that threaten to drive some from their homes, the Miami Herald reports.
“The insurance companies are going berserk,” said concerned owner Joe Fontana to an audience gathered before him. “There’s no limit to what they will charge homeowners. We have to find a way to counteract this or the people in this city are going to be killed.”
Fontana led the 38-building-strong Miami Beach Condominium and Homeowners Alliance in devising a plan to try to stop the runaway cost of wind coverage. Sunshine State residents such as Fontana are fed up with double- and even triple-digit (!) insurance rate increases, and are beginning to come together to fight the uphill battle.
It’s happening throughout the region.
Residents have had enough and are banding together like never before. Home and condo associations formed decades ago, newly formed grass-roots organizations and accidental groups of jaded residents in individual neighborhoods are popping up around the state to press for solutions to Florida’s escalating insurance crisis.
From the Keys to the Panhandle, groups are raising money, firing off e-mails and letter campaigns, holding meetings, sponsoring petition drives and hiring lobbyists and lawyers to make their case to the state government in Tallahassee. There is strength in numbers, as the saying goes, and many are starting to see a benefit of wielding a collective fist.
At the Mimosa condominiums on Collins Avenue on Thursday night, the Miami Beach Alliance explored the idea of self-insuring. But instead it decided to use its political clout. Noting that it is election season, the group will urge its members, representing about 8,000 home and condo owners, to write and call their elected officials about easing the burden.
STANDING “FIRM”
Other groups have embarked on even more ambitious endeavors.
Born from a backyard get-together in Key West, a consumer activist group known as Fair Insurance Rates in Monroe (FIRM) has raised up to $50,000 in its effort to fight Citizens Property Insurance premiums in the Keys, inspired by one woman’s crusade to have her own rates reduced.
Outraged when her property insurance bill rose from $5,000 to a whopping $12,000, Cindy Derocher pplied for mitigation credits and whittled it to $9,600.
“That’s what started us doing research. We found out that Citizens was charging us $20.91 per $1,000 of principal coverage. That’s in comparison to coastal areas on the Panhandle that were paying $4 per $1,000,” said Teri Johnston, FIRM’s president.
FIRM boasts 4,000 members and was founded just this Februrary. The group chartered an airplane to ferry members to the state’s Capitol to meet with lawmakers and invited state Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty and U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican, to the Florida Keys.
SMALL VICTORIES
Its efforts have paid off, at least for the moment. In May, McCarty issued an order to freeze Citizens’ rates in Monroe County. By law, the state’s insurer of last resort must charge the highest rates in the state.
“When we first started this organization, many people said to us that you can’t fight government and you can’t fight big business and you can’t fight the insurance lobby. We have proved that is not true. When you get a group of concerned, educated citizens together, you can,” Johnston said.
Many around the state are taking that message to heart.
The five-month-old Homeowners Against Citizens Florida, a non-profit group out of Pasco County, has seen its ranks swell to 7,000 members statewide. The group says it has collected twice as many signatures on a petition calling for a special legislative session to address the crisis.
Similarly, the year-old, two-million-strong Coalition of Community Association of Florida, an umbrella group of homeowners associations, is drafting insurance legislation that it says would make it harder for insurers to randomly drop policies and plans.
Together with the rising costs of Florida home loans and overall energy prices, the increase in premiums for current and prospective residents is taking a toll on the once torrid housing market. The fallout is so wide-ranging that widespread action became necessary. Motivating homeowners always hasn’t been easy… but it’s been worth it.
“Americans are not very easy to rally together. They would rather watch American Idol than look after their insurance premiums, but it’s an emergency and people are coming out,” said Jan Bergemann, President of Cyber Citizens for Justice.
