Should state make big auto insurers cover homes?

In 2007, Crist signed law that tried to, but exemptions let firms get around enforcement

Every so often, a beleaguered Florida consumer proposes a way to fix Florida’s property insurance availability problem:

The state legislature should require big national insurance companies that bombard the state with auto insurance ads to also sell homeowners insurance.

After all, they ask, why should the big companies be allowed to cherry-pick the easier and most profitable motor vehicle risks while avoiding potentially costlier property risks?

Ed Huber, a Boynton Beach resident, wrote to the Palm Beach Post in 2013 that “Any insurer that is a national/international company will not be allowed to do business in any state unless all of its coverages are available in that state ... To exclude some coverage because of higher risk could not happen.”

Turns out Huber wasn’t the first to come up with that idea. In 2007, such a law was enacted during a special legislative session on homeowner insurance convened by newly elected Gov. Charlie Crist. And the new law was apparently forgotten soon afterward, with little discussion or evident enforcement.

In his 2006 campaign for governor, Crist criticized big insurers for “cherry-picking” auto policies while dropping homeowner policies after unusually active hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005. Florida subsidiaries of Nationwide and Allstate announced they had stopped writing new property insurance business in Florida and were not renewing tens of thousands of existing policies.

The crisis then resembled the one facing Florida now: skyrocketing rates, companies

pulling out of the state, and more than 1 million stranded homeowners forced into state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

Crist argued that the solution included a law banning “cherry-picking” by large insurers that sell home, auto and other products.

“I know in my heart that companies who would write property insurance in other states but not Florida, yet benefit enormously from writing auto policies in our state, need to stop discriminating against Floridians,” Crist said after winning the election, according to a 2007 story in the Palm Beach Post.