Imagine if your property insurance soared from $5,000 a year to $50,000! Now imagine if this was actually the government’s fault.

I cannot conceive of paying $50,000 a year just for home insurance. And I live in Florida, the hurricane zone. But we Floridunces aren’t being bled to death like Allaire Conte in California, who wrote the story in the link below.

Allaire, you might have my sympathy. But then again you might not. You write about insurance companies fleeing the state because regulators set premiums at levels which didn’t cover the risk. You write about neighbors who dropped insurance completely, because they thought fires only happened someplace else. You tell us how uninsured homeowners whistled past the graveyard, telling themselves that because their homes were surrounded by OTHER homes, and several miles away from the untrimmed dead brush. They assumed there was zero risk. And then their uninsured homes burned down the next year.

What's missing from this story? The part where voters should have held elected officials accountable for the dead brush and risky electric wires. And kept returning the same politicians to office. Voters who shrugged off a cascade of quality-of-life issues. Not just the annual “fire season”, but the wall-to-wall homeless tents on sidewalks. Epidemic shoplifting which caused stores to close. First responder stockpiles of Narcan at $600 a dose, to save people from OD'ing on fentanyl.

Maybe California residents thought that by paying the highest tax rates in America (state income tax, property tax, sales tax, gas tax, etc.) that these problems were scheduled to be fixed sometime.

Actually, those problems are still being ignored. The second link below (from KCAL) documents that the risk of catastrophic brushfires remains. Cal Edison has a long-range plan to replace their decrepit century old wires, but they’ve have had this plan for years and years, and customer resistance to even higher electric rates make it hard to pull off.

However, I will grant Los Angeles voters some slack about out-of-control government salaries for friends and family of politicians. This stuff almost never shows up in the newspapers. Like LA’s “water chief” Janisse Quinones, hired by Mayor Karen Bass, at a salary of $750,000 a year. Ms. Quinones drained an LA reservoir for “maintenance” as California entered LAST year's fire season. She’s still on the job today. Mayor Bass DID sack the fire chief though. The one who complained last year that draining reservoirs was bad idea. A prophet is without honor in their own land . . .

Back to Allaire Conte. I’m happy your own home didn’t burn down. I’m unsympathetic to your complaint that your insurer isn’t providing free long term accommodations while your neighbors decide to rebuilt, or decide not to. At least you still have a home, Allaire. If you want your home insured against fire, you have to pay for policy. And if you want a deal which also allows you to check into a motel while your neighbors rebuild, that probably costs more.

I get it. Nobody wants to pay for what things actually cost. That’s why tinder-dry brush has been accumulating for decades, and the electric grid is decrepit. In America, we can have anything we want, provided we agree to pay for it.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

‘My Home Burned Down in the Palisades Fire—Here’s What No One Tells You About Insurance’

KCAL News investigation uncovers brush issues in wake of Palisades Fire