Why are home insurance prices going up?

American homeowners are experiencing the climate crisis in the most tangible of ways: Home insurance is becoming more costly across the country as companies pay ever-higher costs to fix the damage of climate-driven weather events.

“Insuring your home has never been harder,” said The Washington Post. Americans are finding homeownership more costly and even impossible as “insurance costs balloon beyond their ability to pay.” There are a lot of reasons for this, and “intensifying climate risk” that causes “more costly and uncertain extreme weather events” is chief among them. Americans keep moving into areas that are vulnerable to storms. And weather disasters keep costing insurers lots of money. The biggest problem? Hail. “Because the risk is going up,” said Nancy Watkins, an insurance analyst, “prices will go up.”

“Higher home insurance rates are here to stay,” said The Wall Street Journal. That might be the best-case scenario: Many homeowners face “increasing risk of nonrenewals, reduced coverage” or special conditions, like paying for a new roof, to remain eligible for coverage. But the insurance companies have good reason to raise rates, said the Journal: “Insured losses from U.S. storms have grown 8% a year for more than a decade.”

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