Huge Panhandle Fires Reveal A Sad Reality: 26% Of Rural TX Residents Don't Have House Insurance [View all]

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Many Panhandle residents whose dwellings and possessions burned in the region’s ongoing wildfires may never financially recover for one simple reason: Their homes weren’t insured. “A lot of the people who have lost a home had no insurance,” Governor Greg Abbott said at a March 1 press conference. “So there are a lot of people in great need right now.”

Texans pay some of the highest homeowners insurance premiums in the country. Increased risk of extreme weather events, at least partially driven by climate change, have driven up those costs. Growth in homeowners insurance rates here outpaced the rest of the nation last year, straining Texans’ ability to pay. In Texas, those without insurance are also more likely to be those who have a harder time recovering from disaster: lower-income households and rural residents. That means Texans without insurance face a steep — if not impossible — path to restore what financial well-being they had before a disaster strikes.

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Texas homeowners who go without insurance tend to be lower-income, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data conducted by the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University. Homeowners in the state’s rural areas are more likely to not have insurance than their urban counterparts, the analysis found. Some 11 percent of homeowners in the state’s major metropolitan areas don’t have homeowners insurance, whereas about 26 percent of homeowners in rural areas lack it.

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And homeowners insurance is considered the most clear-cut avenue to seek financial restitution after a major disaster, experts told the Tribune. Going without it means homeowners would have to pay for repairs and rebuilding out of pocket — or rely on assistance from the public and private sectors that may not come. Officials haven’t determined the full scope of the disaster as the fires continue to rage, though it’s believed hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed. The ultimate scale of the damage will determine whether displaced residents and others affected by the wildfires qualify for federal disaster aid under an emergency declaration.

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https://grist.org/wildfires/many-homes-burned-in-the-texas-wildfires-werent-insured-creating-a-steep-path-to-recovery/