DeSantis vows to tackle Florida's soaring homeowners insurance rates

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Monday that he will call a special session of the Legislature next month to deal with soaring homeowners insurance rates across Florida.

At a press conference in Jacksonville, DeSantis told reporters that lawmakers weren’t prepared to discuss insurance rates during this week’s special session on congressional maps, but said he was confident that the issue would be addressed next month, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.

“Those are issues like property insurance and trying to bring some sanity and stabilize [it] and have a functioning market,” DeSantis said. I’m confident that we’re going to be able to get that done.”

The conservative governor also said May’s special session could also address “other issues that came close to getting across the finish line that maybe we can tweak and get there.”

Although Florida lawmakers passed reforms in 2021 that limited attorney fees for representing homeowners in lawsuits against insurers and reduced the time to file claims from three to two years, private insurers ultimately attempted to mitigate financial risks by raising rates and dropping customers.

In fact, one Belle Isle resident saw his homeowner’s insurance increase by 65%.

The 2021 law also allowed state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which often charges less than private carriers, to significantly raise rates for customers – a particularly troubling move since millions of customers switched to Citizens after the 2021 law was passed.  

Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani recently blasted DeSantis and the GOP for focusing on “hot-button” culture war issues such as critical race theory and the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill instead of addressing property insurance reform.

“Having wasted the entire regular session to pursue culture wars and dunk on already marginalized people, he is now having to waste public money to bring us back to Tallahassee to deal with the actual real problems that Floridians are facing,” Eskamani said.

The Democratic lawmaker further blasted DeSantis for convening a costly special session, noting that three special sessions in 2015 ultimately cost Floridians about $100,000 per week.

“It’s sad, it’s pathetic, and it’s another display of our governor who does not actually care about the people of Florida,” Eskamani said. “But when pressured to act, then he will waste more public money when we should have solved these problems in a 60 day session.”

Florida’s Republican House Speaker Chris Sprowls said earlier this month that he was confident that reforms put in place in the 2021 session would ultimately lower rates. He conceded, however, that “it takes 18 months to see those [changes] reflected in the rates. We’re about six months out from that.”