California wildfires ignite an insurance crisis, Cal Matters reports, but with nary a mention of "rural"

Dan Walters reported on Monday for CalMatters, the nonprofit website, about the impact recent wildfires--and the destruction of entire towns and hundreds of houses--will have on insurance availability in the Golden State.  Oddly, though, Walters doesn't mention the disproportionate impact of these shifts on rural folks--at least what Californians consider "rural," and what others call the "wildland-urban interface."  Here are the first few paragraphs: 

As if California needed another crisis, the state’s seemingly perpetual wildfires are forcing millions of homeowners in fire-prone areas to pay skyrocketing premiums for insurance coverage — if, indeed, they can buy it at all.

As the number and severity of wildfires increase, insurers are increasingly reluctant to renew policies and even if they do, premiums often double or triple.

Insurance is required for most homeowners since their mortgage lenders demand it. And if they cannot obtain regular coverage, they are forced into the insurer of last resort, FAIR, that has very high premiums and limits on coverage.

Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has repeatedly invoked a law he authored three years ago as a state legislator, imposing one-year moratoriums on policy cancellations for property in or immediately adjacent to the sites of major fires.

In 2020, Lara’s moratoriums covered 2.4 million policyholders after fires scorched more than 4 million acres and consumed hundreds of homes and other buildings. When this year’s fires are finally extinguished, including the immense Dixie fire and the Caldor fire that nearly wiped out South Lake Tahoe, Lara will extend the moratoriums to their burn zones.

And then, from famously posh Marin County, Walters reports this:

There is some scapegoating. This month, Assemblyman Marc Levine, a Democrat from fire-prone Marin County, fired off a letter to insurance trade groups, telling them, “I do not believe that the costs of utility mismanagement, or the impacts of climate change should be arbitrarily and capriciously passed through to my constituents in the form of homeowners’ insurance being declined, non-renewed, or their insurance premiums being raised exorbitantly. Particularly when there has been no change of conditions or circumstances.”

One could think of Marin County as an example of rural gentrification, but I tend to think of it as suburban and exurban San Francisco.  It has one of the highest per capita incomes among California's 58 counties.  My point: I'm less worried about Marin County residents being able to afford insurance than I am counties more rural, farther north, and more clearly impacted by recent fires.  I'm surprised that Walters, who started his career in Humboldt County, isn't more sensitive those other California places.  

Some earlier posts about California wildfires in more rural places are here, here, and here (focusing on WUI:  Wildland-urban interface).