The home insurance market is crumbling in New Orleans, leaving Alfredo Herrera with few options for coverage — and skyrocketing insurance premiums.
Herrera, 35, works in finance for a local bank. He bought his 900-square-foot home in New Orleans’ Mid-City neighborhood in 2020 for $270,000, and lives there with his partner.
In 2022, he paid $1,600 a year for home insurance. But last July, his insurer canceled his coverage, saying it was leaving Louisiana.
In the past, acquiring or keeping homeowners’ insurance didn’t present much of a problem.
But as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather, insurers — especially those in areas most impacted by floods and fires — are raising their premiums, or pulling out altogether, impacting the affordability and availability of home and fire insurance.
Insurance does not want to pay and will find any way not too. My grandparents house flooded in Katrina along with mine and the rest of my family’s and 90% of the rest of the parish and my grandparents never saw a red cent from the insurance they faithfully paid because of some technicality on the way that the house flooded.
A lot of people have already moved north across the lake and into Mississippi but people are getting complacent and building million dollar homes on multiple lots that have been abandoned since Katrina.