Are these all clustered in a few hot spots that are likely to go under the next time there is a fire/landslide/earthquake? Why these units and not others? What does State Farm consider the most insurable places to live?
That's almost 60% of the total. I'm guessing because commercial apartments present a more geographically-concentrated fire risk (either you lose all the units or none).
If this was State Farm deciding to drop insurance on homes that are in grossly overgrown forests with no buffer then it would make a lot more sense given the likely increase in fire activity in the coming years.
People should be allowed to live where they want - but it's well past time this country stopped subsidizing the risk of building in places where natural disasters commonly wreck buildings.
In the given picture how much risk is being subsidized by the government? What form does that take? What about East Palestine, OH? Can we live near train tracks? What about Paradise, CA? Can we live near power lines? Blizzards can become natural disasters, is the entire area above the snow line now facing new rules for building?
> commonly wreck buildings.
I can't say much about those buildings right there in the picture, but some of them have clearly been there for decades.
The main form of subsidy that these particular buildings enjoy is the construction and repair of roads on sliding hillsides. A further subsidy is their overrepresentation in the budget of the fire department, since this area is served by relatively more fire stations per capita than the central city. Finally, the topic of this article: in cases of fire, the owners of these buildings will expect the rest of us to bail them out.
FYI, these buildings are also directly atop the Hayward Fault.
> What about Paradise, CA?
It should be obvious that as a matter of public policy nobody should be allowed to build a dwelling inside a forest the way Paradise was built.
Big corporations are such that the left hand and right hand seldom know what they are each doing. A team and I consulted there about ten years ago. In the silo we were working in was the single most risk-averse place I've ever seen. On one hand, that would appear to be a good cultural element given their business, but on the other it was so extreme that I found it to be a major turnoff - it felt so extreme as to be wasteful. Not that hard to imagine then taking an extreme position on who they will insure as the world shifts.
The criteria for flagging seems to be houses built before 1985, in areas that have had any sort of wildfire in a x mile radius over the past 20-30 years, and perhaps some other features. The insurance companies will use every possible excuse regardless of the insured's willingness to respond to their bullshit.
Most Californians are finding notice of non renewals and forcing homeowners into a CA state sponsored high cost/low coverage plan. It seems intentional by the state to pickup more money, but that's my tinfoil hat.