{"id":51577,"date":"2024-11-04T18:10:12","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T23:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=51577"},"modified":"2024-11-04T18:10:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T23:10:21","slug":"have-some-mercy-will-the-state-approve-citizens-insurance-14-rate-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/11\/04\/have-some-mercy-will-the-state-approve-citizens-insurance-14-rate-hike\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Have some mercy&#8217; Will the state approve Citizens Insurance 14% rate hike?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Back in August, state-backed Citizens Property Insurance&nbsp;pleaded its case to the State&#8217;s Office of Insurance Regulation,&nbsp;requesting a 14% rate increase for its policyholders. That was before back-to-back hurricanes.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" data-dominant-color=\"f0f1ef\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1110px) 100vw, 1110px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Citizens-Property-Insurance-Corporation-jpeg.webp?resize=200%2C200&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-50433 not-transparent\" style=\"--dominant-color: #f0f1ef; width:259px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Citizens-Property-Insurance-Corporation-jpeg.webp?w=200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Citizens-Property-Insurance-Corporation-jpeg.webp?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to the&nbsp;rate hike request, Citizens is pushing for an average near-14% increase in 2025 for many of its 1.2 million policyholders. According to the company\u2019s own, personal line policies would see average premiums jump hundreds of dollars:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Miami-Dade\u2014 $699.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Palm Beach\u2014 $670.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hillsborough and Pinellas\u2014 $360.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, months later, the state still hasn&#8217;t decided whether to approve the rate hike.<br>Margaret Bowles&#8217;s Dana Shores home flooded in Helene, and she has Citizens Property Insurance on a rental she owns in St. Pete. She&#8217;s hoping the state shows mercy after this hurricane season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;It forces me to have to pass that increase onto the tenants,&#8221; Bowles said. &#8220;I&#8217;m trying to remember what my premium is it seems like with Citizens it was much lower than regular homeowners.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to CEO Tim Cerio, that&#8217;s exactly why Citizens, the state&#8217;s insurer of last resort, is asking for this rate hike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;We are ridiculously cheap compared to the private market,&#8221; Cerio said. &#8220;We are not supposed to compete with the private market.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We spoke with Florida&#8217;s Insurance Commissioner, Michael Yaworsky, at a state insurance village after Hurricane Helene. He said a decision will likely be made in mid-November as hurricane season winds down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;It&#8217;s pretty rare for a Citizens filing to be approved in the same way it was filed so we were are looking at it delicately,&#8221; Yaworsky said. &#8220;We are taking the time to make sure we get it right \u2014 we don&#8217;t want a situation where Citizens does an assessment but we don&#8217;t want people to pay more than they need at this time.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because for storm victims like Bowles, that&#8217;s the last thing they need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Have some mercy, have some mercy on folks,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Because even insurance doesn&#8217;t make you whole, we are finding that filing all these claims that it&#8217;s not going to make us whole either way. So we need a break.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in August, state-backed Citizens Property Insurance&nbsp;pleaded its case to the State&#8217;s Office of Insurance Regulation,&nbsp;requesting a 14% rate increase for its policyholders. That was before back-to-back hurricanes. According to&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"14","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":50433,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Citizens-Property-Insurance-Corporation-jpeg.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[10238],"class_list":["post-51577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-have-some-mercy-will-the-state-approve-citizens-insurance-14-rate-hike"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51578,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51577\/revisions\/51578"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}