Fortifying

Mike Vogel | 6/1/2007

Fittingly for Florida, the answer to the insurance crisis is to build our way out of it.

Reinforcing Florida homes to withstand hurricane winds has become a strategy on which politicians, the insurance industry and its antagonists agree. The Legislature's first $250 million toward home-hardening generated 100,000 home inspections. Grants from that appropriation hardened 70,000 homes, says Leslie Chapman-Henderson, president and CEO of the non-profit Federal Alliance for Safe Homes. It doesn't sound like much in a state with an estimated 3.5 million to 4 million homes not up to current wind code. Still, Chapman-Henderson says, "That 70,000 is a great start to hardening and fortifying the homes in our state. You've got 70,000 families that won't be wholly displaced as they were in '04 and '05." She says 71,000 homes in Florida were destroyed by the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes.

HOME HARDENING: Reinforcing homes has become a state priority. "That will bring the insurance news market back and bring costs down," says Sen. Bill Posey.

It's likely the inspections convinced some additional homeowners to reinforce their homes without grant money after they saw the savings that improvements would mean to their premiums. The state has mandated premium discounts for homeowners who reinforce.

Says Sen. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, chairman of the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee, "There is only one ultimate solution, and that is the hardening of the state. That will bring the insurance market back and bring costs down and take risk away from the government and from property owners. The properties have to get hardened before they get hit. If everybody does that, the crisis is over."

Tags: Housing/Construction