“Californians on the FAIR Plan — the state’s ‘insurer of last resort’ — can expect to see their rates rise sharply in the near future,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle last week. Since many floating homes are covered by the Fair Plan, the Floating Times reached out to Samantha Fazio of Hawser Marine Insurance Services for an opinion on whether these increases might affect our community.
She replied that the plan uses a fire line score for assessing wildfire risks, and “since their announcement last year that rates would rise, I have only seen floating home premiums go down (except in 2 specific cases that were due to other issues).”
A fire line score is a rating of wildfire risk and evaluates areas to see how well they could handle a fire. According to riskfactor.com, our community scores a rating of 3 out of 10, or a moderate risk for fire. By the way, we also score 1 of 10 for flooding or wind damage (minimal risk).
“Since rates have gone down recently,” Samantha added, “it would take some time to push them back up again if that were to happen down the road.” She suggests getting our docks confirmed as a firewise community. That’s a designation provided by the National Fire Protection Association, and firewise communities are offered up to a 7% discount for that certification. Samantha notes, “There are a few certified firewise communities in Marin so it can happen.”