Some Tri-State homeowners hit by extreme weather being dropped by insurers, others seeing rate hike

Anytime the rainwater rushes into the subway system, or streets turn into rivers like they did earlier this month in New Jersey, homeowner Maria Reuter gets anxiety.

"It was just so stressful and so overwhelming," said Reuter.

She has been a victim of Mother Nature before.

She filed two claims with her insurance company in three months. First, she says the water from Hurricane Ida caused her ceiling to bubble. Then, a short time later, her basement flooded with sewage water, costing thousands of dollars in damages.

A year later, she received a phone call from her insurer.

"They told us, we're not insuring you anymore, you're too high risk of a client, too high risk because you filed too many claims," said Reuter.

"Unfortunately, they're forgetting that people are at the heart of the problem, at the heart of who's being affected," she said.

She's not alone.

7 On Your Side Investigates tracked and mapped small increases each year in the number of families who have been dropped by their insurance companies, and they're not just families who live along the coast.

"It's just one more thing for people to worry about, where before I thought insurance was really like a safety net. And now it feels like a burden," said Reuter.

While there's a slight increase in people being dropped by insurance providers, research shows big increases in homeowners' insurance rates from 2018 to 2023.

An analysis by S&P Global found an average spike of 15% in New Jersey, 19% in New York, and 23% in Connecticut.

"There have been increases," said Assemblyman David Weprin, who is the chair of the Assembly's Insurance Committee. "It's significant," he said.

"We've had a number of hurricane flood-type of events in New York that we haven't had in years," he said.

Weprin said higher premiums are partly due to fraudulent insurance claims and to climate change.

"I think there's no question this is a correlation between some of these climate events and insurance premiums going up," said Weprin.

His committee is working to put safeguards in place to keep insurers in the state and to help prevent increases. Weprin said he's not aware of any insurers leaving the state, and there are hundreds of providers. He recommends that homeowners do comparison shopping.

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