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While I appreciate Congress and the Governor’s recent attempts to stabilize Florida’s property insurance industry, the simple fact remains that most seniors in bonds feel that interest rates cannot be sustained. increase.
Property and casualty insurance rates in Florida are widely reported to be two to three times higher than the national average. However, in the North Florida metropolitan area, the rates are even higher. Pensacola zip codes have the highest property insurance rates in the state.
Tallahassee is my hometown and I have lived here for decades. But the Pensacola area is where I grew up from childhood to adulthood. My mother still lives in her small Bayside community between Pensacola and Pensacola Beach.
The house my mother lives in is the house we grew up in. It was common back then, but today it costs too much. It has endured decades of storms without serious damage, and has only once experienced flooding that covered the yard, but never entered the house and quickly retreated.
After my father passed away from cancer two years ago, my mother lives alone in the house with a regular income. With prices on everything from groceries to electricity skyrocketing, her mother struggles to keep up with her monthly budget. But she did everything right. She monitors her spending, lives within her income, pays taxes and insurance. Amazing for the 80’s.
Until now. My mother’s property insurance has been steadily rising for decades, rising to $4,000 a year last year. When my father was alive, they were able to keep the same property insurance company for years, but after a few years of storms, their insurance company (like many others) ) left the state and was forced into a volatile market. Annual premiums are $6,200 for her, up $2,200 from last year.
Mom’s fixed income hasn’t increased, so she’s had to pour more often into the little retirement eggs she’d saved over the years of hard work with Dad. And her $6,200 property insurance bill threatens to bankrupt her in just a few years. At this rate, her property insurance became the most expensive monthly bill she has now—more than her medical bills, utilities, food, gas, and prescriptions. . And over time, this will only make her unable to pay.
something has to be done Or, for the first time in decades that her mother has lived in her own home, there is no insurance or protection for her in the event of a fire, storm damage, or another catastrophe. The price of living in her paradise, the place she called her home all her life, had become too high.
I think it’s the same for the thousands of other senior citizens currently living in Florida.
Philip Wilcox is a Florida retiree and lives in Tallahassee.
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