Homeowner insurance crisis worsens

TALLAHASSEE – Democrat Charlie Crist turned up the heat Tuesday on Gov. Ron DeSantis as the state's property insurance woes deepened two months after he signed into law industry-friendly measures stemming from a special session of the Legislature.

The move by Crist came a day after Bankers Insurance Group, based in his hometown St. Petersburg, announced it was pulling out of Florida. The company is at least the 16th insurer to leave the state, declare insolvency or stop writing policies in recent months.

Close to 400,000 Florida homeowners have lost their insurance coverage this year.

"Despite this, Gov. DeSantis is trying to take a victory lap," Crist said Tuesday at a Tampa news conference, where he was joined by the state's former Insurance Consumer Advocate, Sean Shaw, also a former Democratic state House member and attorney general candidate.

"Working Floridians know he's turned his back on them, because the hits keep coming," Crist said of DeSantis. "You're paying too much for less coverage."

Crist is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in the Aug. 23 primary against Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried. The winner of that contest will face DeSantis in November.

Fried has said that as governor, she would work to reduce frivolous lawsuits and limit insurance fraud to bring down property coverage rates. She also would strengthen the Insurance Consumer Advocate's role.

Banker's announcement comes even as 27 companies are operating under the threat of having their financial ratings downgraded by Ohio-based Demotech, which rates insurance firms. While the downgrade was supposed to occur Tuesday, the company has told state officials it won't occur "until further notice."

Lindsey Curnutte, a DeSantis campaign spokeswoman, said the Republican governor was "working to clean up the mess Charlie's policies created." Crist, then a Republican, was governor from 2007-11 during a similarly challenging time for Florida homeowners.

"Charlie's attacks are ironic coming from the man who single-handedly booted property insurance companies out of Florida with his anti-free market policy experiment in 2007," Curnutte said..

A spokeswoman for the governor's office, Christina Pushaw, said officials are monitoring the situation with Demotech and the potential downgrade's effect on millions of Florida policyholders.

Echoing concerns aired by Florida's Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, DeSantis' office was critical of Demotech's "inconsistent application of its own methodology and its unilateral decision" involving Florida's insurers.

Crist, though, said DeSantis should take more aggressive steps, including guaranteeing that no homeowner be left without insurance that would threaten possible mortgage foreclosure. DeSantis also should allow anyone who loses coverage to join state-backed Citizens Property Insurance, Corp., at a rate that will not change for a year, and expand its coverage limits, Crist said.

Citizens is being flooded with new customers, and projected to reach 1.2 million policies by the end of this year. Citizens' President and CEO Barry Gilway said this month the company was experiencing "almost incomprehensible growth."

The property insurance market's freefall comes even after DeSantis called the special legislative session in May that steered $2 billion of taxpayer money into a fund to help insurers pay hurricane damage claims, limit lawsuits against companies and have homeowners shoulder more of the cost for roof replacements.

But homeowners' insurance rates continue to climb. Property insurance premiums in Florida are three times the national average, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Crist, a Democratic member of Congress since 2016, was a combative advocate who took on insurance companies during his time in the governor's office.

He managed to get rates reduced early in his term, while allowing Citizens to take on more policies, but by the time he left office in 2011, rates were climbing again and his successor, Gov. Rick Scott, was committed to reducing Citizens' size, triggering even higher private insurance rates.

The size of Citizens then, however, was roughly 1.2 million policies – the same mark it is expected to reach this year, even with DeSantis' changes.

"Companies go to the Legislature and say if you let us do whatever we want to do ... then over a couple of years, the rates will go down," Shaw said. "It's a promise the Legislature keeps falling for."

John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network's Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport