Popular Solutions for the Home Insurance Crisis

Data for Progress and Climate and Community Institute's monthly snapshot of the widespread demand and pathways forward for climate action.

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Apr 07, 2025

Intensifying political chaos and insufficient planning to combat climate and economic crises pose existential challenges. In this newsletter, we offer a monthly snapshot of the widespread demand for climate action and pathways forward.

Voters Want Solutions to the Home Insurance Crisis — We Should Remake the System Entirely

As increasingly devastating climate disasters sweep the country, insurance companies are reducing or refusing coverage, leaving millions without adequate policies to help them recover their homes. A recent Data for Progress poll, in collaboration with the Insurance Fairness Project, shows that a large majority (78%) of voters are concerned about future price increases they will face as a result of the home insurance crisis.

Most voters (85%) blame insurance executives for rising insurance prices, and also want their government to step in to keep insurance prices fair and hold insurance companies to account. In fact, 61% of voters feel that the federal government is doing too little to ensure that home insurance companies are acting in the interests of policyholders, while 52% and 50%, respectively, believe that neither their state government nor their state insurance commissioner is doing enough to hold these companies accountable.

Bar chart of polling data from Data For Progress. Title: Voters Believe Institutions Are Doing Too Little to Hold Insurance Companies Accountable. Description: Please indicate if you believe each of the following is doing too much, too little, or about the right amount to ensure that home insurance companies are acting in consumers' interests? Home insurance companies themselves — Too much: 9%, The right amount: 21%, Too little: 59%, Don't know: 11% The federal government — Too much: 9%, The right amount: 19%, Too little: 61%, Don't know: 11% My state government — Too much: 8%, The right amount: 26%, Too little: 52%, Don't know: 13% My state insurance commissioner — Too much: 7%, The right amount: 26%, Too little: 50%, Don't know: 17% March 7–8, 2025 survey of 1,203 U.S. likely voters.

People want better home insurance coverage. The current system is not only ill-prepared to handle the worsening climate crisis, but is already failing Americans as companies increasingly abandon coverage for people across the country. This polling reflects that voters are already grappling with the looming home insurance crisis. Voters think they’ll eventually directly face the economic consequences of the home insurance crisis, whether or not they have already had any personal experience with extreme weather events.

A recent report by the Climate and Community Institute shows just this: The insurance crisis isn’t just a problem in states like Florida and California; people are at high risk of significant losses due to property damage and destruction from multiple climate hazards nationwide.

Though popular media often focuses on the threat of losses from a singular climate or other event, like a hurricane or wildfire, Climate and Community Institute’s research — including the map below — highlights that communities across the country are facing a compounding threat of losses from multiple hazards. As the map indicates in yellow, counties across the U.S. are at risk of upward of five distinct types of hazards.

Title: All across the US, counties face significant property loss due to multiple types of disasters Image: Map of US counties facing high expected property loss, symbolized by the number of disaster risk categories threatening property loss. Numbers range from one to five or more, with most counties facing at least one and many counties across the entire country facing more than one type of risk. Source: Climate and Community Institute, “Shared Fates: A Housing Resilience Policy Vision for the Home Insurance Crisis” Notes: Significant property loss is defined as the 90th percentile of expected annual loss of property value. Risk categories are those included in the FEMA National Risk Index.

CCI’s analysis outlines overlaps between rising insurance prices and climate risk, and shows how these burdens will be disproportionately borne by those who cannot afford it. To that end, CCI’s report offers a comprehensive policy proposal that aims to provide protections for homeowners and renters, and meet the moment of a rapidly changing climate. CCI recommends the creation of housing resilience agencies (HRAs), either by states or the federal government. HRAs would:

Provide public disaster insurance that offers fair and equitable protections;
Coordinate and oversee comprehensive, community-oriented disaster risk reduction;
Address existing market failures by providing coverage for oft-neglected sectors, such as multifamily housing providers, mobile home dwellers, and heirs’ properties; and
Host public risk models, climate risk advisory councils, and diverse governing boards to inform decision-making in a transparent and democratic manner.

People want help handling rising insurance prices and the worsening of climate disasters, and are looking to federal and state governments to rein in private insurance companies and provide a better, fairer form of home insurance. Better, public insurance options could reduce costs, increase coverage, and democratize oversight and planning for an uncertain future. Without institutional action, the U.S. will continue to leave people at the whim of private insurers and forced to weather the storm alone.

A guest post by

Climate & Community Institute

Climate and Community Institute (CCI) is a progressive climate and economy think tank. We work with movements and progressive policy makers to pass new policy, improve implementation, shift narratives, and deepen coalitions.

Data for Climate Progress

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