Louisiana’s home insurance crisis is an existential threat to our future. Since Hurricane Ida in 2021, Louisiana Citizens, the state run insurer of last resort, has increased average rates by 164% or $2,800 a year. For this reason, many homeowners are opting out of home insurance. In 2022, Louisiana’s share of uninsured homeowners was 12%, nearly double the national average. Many experts believe that number has since sharply risen. 

Skyrocketing premiums make homeownership unaffordable for low and middle income families, raise rent prices as landlords pass off insurance rate increases, and force affordable housing providers to sell off units. More uninsured homeowners mean that just one storm could wipe out communities who’ve lived here for generations. Our future becomes tenuous at best.

For political, financial, and environmental reasons, this crisis cannot be solved at the state level. Louisiana’s Republican controlled government passed bills this year to further deregulate the insurance industry. Consumer advocates believe this will do little to lower premiums. Louisiana is also particularly prone to costly environmental disasters. We now face an average of 5 separate billion-dollar disasters a year, compared to an average of 1.7 events in the 2010s. Lastly, with many national insurers leaving Louisiana, regional insurers and Louisiana Citizens are becoming the primary insurers of Louisianans. This means that those insurers take on the riskiest policies, making them more vulnerable in the case of a costly disaster.

We need a champion in Congress who will fight for the bold solutions we need to solve our home insurance crisis. Instead, our representatives are bought and paid for by the insurance industry. They fail to support legislation such as the INSURE Act and accept campaign contributions from the insurance industry. We need a fighter for our future, not their profits.

For Louisianans, Floridians, Californians, and millions of other Americans who will face increasingly frequent and costly disasters, we need a federal insurance program that in the short term lowers premiums and regulates insurance companies, and in the long term ensures our future with a federal public insurance program.

Solution #1: Bring Insurance Companies Back to Louisiana with Catastrophe Reinsurance

Since 2020, 12 insurers have left Louisiana. Executives and state regulators blamed a series of bad storms as well as a difficult reinsurance market, where insurers receive insurance. However, advocates have also blamed poor regulation of insurance companies. 

A federal catastrophe reinsurance program would provide insurance companies an affordable reinsurance option while giving the federal government leverage to regulate insurance companies and ensure they write policies in risk-prone areas like New Orleans.

This is why in Congress I will work to:

  • Establish a Federal Catastrophe Reinsurance Program to cap insurers’ liability in the case of a catastrophic event, as outlined in Rep. Adam Schiff’s INSURE Act

  • Require that insurers enrolled in the program insure a minimum amount of properties within riskier areas, that 75% of claims are paid within 60 days, and other consumer protection requirements.

  • Require that insurers enrolled in the program disclose fossil fuel investments.

  • Push for provisions in the INSURE Act to ensure equity and affordability for low-income households as well as incentives for robust state disaster insurance programs (not insurers of last resort).

  • Vigorously oppose proposals like those in Trump’s Project 2025 to eliminate the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and replace it entirely with the private insurance market that is currently abandoning Louisianans.

Solution #2: Invest in Our Future by Funding Risk Reduction and Home Hardening

Climate change is forcing us to adapt how we build and maintain our homes. These adaptations require upfront investment, but the National Institute of Building Sciences estimates that every $1 invested in risk mitigation saves up to $13. Without federal support, only the wealthy will be able to afford the upfront investment. 

In order to lower the costs associated with disasters and ensure that low and middle income families can weather these storms without losing their homes, the federal government must invest in risk reduction and home hardening. 

This is why in Congress I will work to:

  • Fund programs to cover the costs of risk reduction and home hardening projects for low and middle income families as well as affordable housing units.

  • Support assistance to state policymakers to implement the recommendations made by the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) to incorporate climate risk into state insurance supervision.

  • Fund community-oriented risk reduction projects such as fixing New Orleans’ drainage system, sewer upgrades, and more.

  • Create job training and workforce development programs to ensure we have skilled workers for home hardening and risk reduction projects

  • Ensure the funds go towards creating more union jobs.

  • Support the White House’s proposal for a national catastrophe model platform to ensure transparent oversight over insurance markets and inform the federal government’s investments in climate resilience and disaster relief.

Solution #3: Protect Our Homes for Generations with a Federal Public Insurance Program

We need a long term solution to address the fundamental issue with home insurance: it is becoming increasingly unprofitable to insure homes in Louisiana and other climate disaster prone states. We thus need to transform our system away from a profit-driven model to a model that recognizes our shared fate and ensures our future.

This could look like a federal insurance program that insures property owners in the case of a natural disaster, and is able to do so at an affordable rate with the help of federal resources and without a profit incentive. This program could either subsidize insurance plans for low and middle income families, compete with other insurers or replace them all together. However, more research is needed into these potential options and the best approach for a transformation of the home insurance industry.

This is why in Congress I will work to:

  • Fund market research into the long-term viability of the home insurance industry as climate change causes more frequent and costly natural disasters, through the Office of Financial Research (OFR)

  • Direct the FIO to collaborate with policy researchers to propose a federal insurance program that ensures low and middle income families living in disaster prone areas have affordable home insurance or resources to relocate if necessary.

  • Reform the federal disaster relief process so that aid reaches communities equitably and efficiently when disasters hit.

  • Reverse the Trump administration’s financial deregulation and re-establish federal oversight over insurance company giants.

  • Repeal the McCarran–Ferguson Act so that the federal government can effectively regulate and enforce antitrust laws against the insurance industry.