ORLANDO, Fla. – With Florida’s property insurance crisis worsening after Hurricane Ian, Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling legislators back to Tallahassee to address the issue, as well as looking at offering property tax relief to those who lost their homes and businesses to the storm.
“All citizens in Florida are going to be paying for Ian for years to come in the form of assessments on insurance policies, whether they had a claim or not,” said Tom Cotton.
Cotton, owner of Hugh Cotton Insurance in Orlando, spoke to News 6 about the impact of Ian — a storm that has caused more than $6 billion in insured losses, according to state estimates.
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“What we learned in Hurricane Ian is that all of Florida is in a flood zone of some sort,” Cotton said.
He added it complicates the existing property insurance crisis. DeSantis called a special session of the Florida legislature in May to pass reforms. A second session announced in October will re-visit the challenging property insurance market and possible solutions.
“We did a legislative session in May, you know, there were some very positive reforms that were done but there were also things that we wanted to do that the legislature at the time was not able to do,” DeSantis said. “I think we’ll be able to do that in this special session.”
Cotton said one suggestion is to disincentivize lawsuits on roof repairs.
“To fix the issue in my opinion, we need to get the fraudulent lawsuits completely erased from the homeowner equation,” Cotton said. “In the last two years, $3 billion has been paid by homeowners, carriers, and fraudulent roof claims. Of the $3 billion, $2.3 billion went to attorneys, $700,000 went to homeowners. Simple math, get the attorneys out of the equation, homeowners rates come down 66%.”
Cotton said Citizens Property Insurance, the state insurer of last resort, must also face reforms.
“Citizens’ rates must become actuarially sound,” Cotton said. “Right now, our choices are very limited from the standpoint of viable homeowner carriers willing to write new policies. That leaves Citizens.”
Cotton hopes lawmakers will make these changes when they meet after the November election.
“If they do what needs to be done, private equity and free market capitalists are going to pour into this state and say, ‘Listen, we don’t want to write a million homeowners in Florida, but we will write 100,000 and we will take them at a very competitive rate,” Cotton said.
Cotton said we have already seen the impact of inaction.
“The legislature has kicked the can so far down the road that they’ve run out of road,” said State Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg.
Brandes said he called for a second special session in early October. He said something must be done quickly.
“People are going to be looking at 30% to 40% rate increases on top of the 100% rate increases that they’ve seen over the last two to three years. It is unsustainable, and you’re about to gut the middle class in the state of Florida if you don’t fix property insurance,” Brandes said.
DeSantis has not shared what measures on property insurance might look like or how they might affect property owners. He also has not shared an exact date for the special session. He said it will be sometime after the election and before the end of the year.
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