Here’s one way to think about the state of Florida’s increasingly awful property insurance crisis: Right now there are currently more policies under our state-backed insurance of “last resort” than there are residents in a large swath of New England.

Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corp. is growing more every day.

The property insurer added more than 4,600 policies last week as it nears a total of 1.4 million policies. Ss of Friday, Citizens has reached 1,391,777 policies, which is up from 1,387,163 a week earlier and 1,379,289 two weeks earlier, according to data posted on its website.

If you’re wondering, New Hampshire has a population of 1.37 million people.

Citizens, which was created as an insurer of last resort, has seen massive growth during the past three years as private insurers have shed policies and raised rates because of financial problems.

Florida’s property insurance crisis has only worsened over the last few years. Since January of 2020, at least a dozen insurers have either fled Florida or have stopped renewing policies, which has resulted in more and more people using Citizens.

And while the New Hampshire comparison is certainly embarrassing, the amount of policies under Citizens have actually ballooned to a size larger than the populations of 9 other U.S. states.

According to the 2020 U. S. Census, Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, and Maine are all dwarfed by Florida’s back-up property insurance provider.

Coincidently, the massive increase in Citizens policies come as the state-backed provider recently proposed double-digit rate hikes. Last week, Citizens asked the state Office of Insurance Regulation for a rate increase that would essentially average a 11.5% spike for most homeowners.

Meanwhile, the person who is responsible for dealing with all this, Florida’s CFO and DeSantis-appointed brown-noser Jimmy Patronis, is instead spending his time tweeting about George Soros and Sen. John Fetterman’s hoodie.

Information from this story came from the News Service of Florida.

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Quick soap box: When you’re making big decisions about life and death, with respect to the military and first responders, don’t you think the U.S. Senate should be held to some kind of higher standard than what they wear in their living rooms? What they do is serious.
— Jimmy Patronis (@JimmyPatronis) September 18, 2023