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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. If you're just joining us, it is our day before Christmas, day before Hanukkah starts tomorrow night and two days before Kwanzaa begins on Thursday. All callers edition of the Brian Lehrer show today. Coming up later in the show, we will do an all caller generated edition of 100 Years of 100 Things, our WNYC Centennial Series. It'll be the best true story from your family from the last 100 years. Think of one that's either funny or meaningful or surprising in some way. It can be heavy, it can be light. It can just be the best family joke that's lasted for at least a generation or just interesting to the wider world for whatever reason.

The best true story from your family for the last 100 years. Get them ready. We'll take them in different chronological chunks coming up later in the show. Should be fun. We'll invite you to tell your true family story on the air. Right now, it's an all calls edition of our Climate Story of the Week, which many of you know we've been doing every Tuesday on the show all this year. Since it's Tuesday, we'll do a climate story here on December 24th like any other Tuesday.

Our climate calls question is, how has the changing climate affected your homeowners insurance or had any other financial impact on you or someone you know? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text, how has the changing climate affected your homeowners insurance rates or had any other financial impact on you or someone you know? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. The Wall Street Journal, for example, has been on this story with a few articles this month. One is headlined, Your Home Insurance Bill Has Only One Way to Go, Up.

Damage from hail is fueling a jump in claims as more homes are built in disaster prone areas. Another one just published yesterday in the Journal is called Insurance and Taxes Now Cost More than Mortgages for Many Homeowners. As ballooning expenses rewrite the math of home ownership, insurers have pushed big rate increases because of losses from natural disasters and rising costs to repair homes. Surging home values in recent years, meanwhile, have lifted property taxes for many homeowners.

For our Climate Story of the Week call in, we're on the first part of that rising insurance rates because of losses from natural disasters, as the article puts it. Of course, we could debate how natural these disasters are as opposed to how man made from man made global warming as the amount of area in the United States and elsewhere that is prone to these so called natural disasters is expanding. Who can help us report this story of not just climate science, as an abstract thing, we do a lot of climate science in our Climate Story of the Week or climate politics. We do a lot of climate politics from left and right in our Climate Story of the Week, but in this case a personal financial impact of the changing climate on you or someone you know.

We only need a few calls on this, so call in if you have one, and that'll be our Climate Story of the Week. We'll do this for a few minutes. We'll go on to another call in segment on this all caller show, your homeowners insurance bill if you live on the Jersey shore or Long Island's north or south shore or in areas prone to river flooding more than they were before or somewhere now more prone to wildfires perhaps. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. The Washington Post is on this story, too. They had an article this month called Insuring Your Home has Never Been Harder. Here's how to do it.

That article starts with this story. Listen to this. Christina Temple moved to Truckee, California, to buy her first home. The small mountain town, a short drive from Lake Tahoe, offered the former preschool teacher and her husband, a carpenter, a shot at becoming middle class by escaping crushing housing costs near Santa Cruz, California. “We moved up here for a better life,” she said in a phone interview. “For two or three years, we got that taste.”

Then the insurance bills came, the article says. In 2017, the couple paid $1,100 to insure their small cabin. Since then, 9 of California’s 10 largest wildfires have erupted, sending the insurance market into turmoil. Three insurers have dropped her in three years. This year, a basic policy from the public FAIR plan, the state-run insurer of last resort, and supplemental private insurance will cost Temple $6,000, up from 1,100 at the beginning of the story from 2017. It's likely to rise again, says the Washington Post. It quotes Christina Temple, the homeowner, saying, "Now we're back to watching each paycheck and budgeting for everything."

That story from the Washington Post for our Climate Story of the Week call in today. We're inviting a few stories from you on how climate change is affecting you or someone you know financially. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Anyone buy a home recently? I've heard that this is an issue in various parts of New Jersey, for example, and not been able to get homeowners insurance or an insurer has pulled out of the market and therefore there's less competition and that's pushing up the price as well.

I have a friend who owns a home in the Catskills and they tell me that there are some really great mountain homes that in the past would have sold pretty fast, but more recently have been sitting on the market for month after month. Why? Because they are by a river or a lake. The ironic thing is that would have made them among the most desirable properties in the past, right? Lakefront home, house with river views, but now those idyllic settings are also known as flood risks in more cases than before.

What was once a feature now becomes a bug and the homes don't sell or the price gets marked down so the buyers can afford the flood insurance that they'll have to augment their purchase with. Listeners, help us report this story yourself. How has the changing climate affected your homeowners insurance rates or ability to get homeowners insurance or had any other financial impact on you or someone you know? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. I'm sure there are other ways too. I've been dwelling mostly on homeowners insurance from flood or fire risk. What am I not thinking of? It's any way that the change in climate has affected you financially.

Maybe it's in how you decide to heat your home, how the laws or impending laws are incentivizing you, or maybe you feel coercing you to spend money to adapt to climate change. Maybe this will matter to politics too, when your calls come in as the incoming administration seems ready to downplay climate risk mitigation. Share your stories. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. A personal financial impact of the changing climate on you or someone you know. 212-433-9692, and we'll take your calls and texts right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, an all caller edition of the Brian Lehrer show today right now with your calls in our Climate Story of the Week, which we do every Tuesday this year. By the way, we're going to be expanding the brand in 2025. We're going to rebrand. Telling you a little program note here. Our Climate Story of the Week as a health and Climate Story of the Week, we're going to expand this section with some of the things we expect to be coming down the pike medically, scientifically, and obviously policy wise in the new year.

We're going to do a Health and Climate Story of the Week coming up in 2025. For this edition of our straight Climate Story of the Week, it's your personal financial impact of the changing climate on you or someone you know. Tom in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tom.

Tom: Hi, Brian. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What you got.

Tom: Brian, it's very interesting. I have a house in Pennsylvania, and I got my insurance bill from it. I go, "Jeez, kind of hard," and I kind of read through it. Lo and behold, there are certain things that they list separately, like when they were done to the house to fix it. I noticed that they said my roof was from 1991, and I had had one just put on. I called the insurance agent, I said, wait a second, da, da, da, da, da. They said, "Oh, let us look into it." Lo and behold, I saved a nice chunk of money because I gave them the paperwork, I showed that it was done, I paid for it and everything.

I saved probably about 10% on my insurance. It's probably something most people don't take into consideration, some of the things they do to repair and make their houses better because you'll have less leaks because it's a brand new roof. Just something that people might want to think about.

Brian Lehrer: Okay, that's a good tip, Tom. Thank you for starting us off that way. Let's go next to Mark in Monmouth County. You're on WNYC. Hi, Mark.

Mark: Hi, Brian. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good.

Mark: We live in a condo right on the Sandy Hook Bay in Monmouth County, New Jersey. About two years ago, our condominium unit owners umbrella policy quadrupled in premium. Our earlier insurance company left the state, didn't want to write anymore, and we had to go into the assigned risk pool and they say anybody within a mile of the water is in that pool now, and the rates have just skyrocketed.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have an example of dollar figures? You're comfortable with that or do you know it well enough?

Mark: I believe our premium was 200,000. It went to 800,000 for the complex.

Brian Lehrer: For the complex. Mark, thank you very much. Selena in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Selena.

Belena: Yes. Hi, my name is Belena. Thank you for taking my call. I'm pretty high on the rock here in upper Manhattan. My mother's house, she passed away in the last two years, is located in Nassau county on the North Shore. we received-- first of all, we didn't get the notice they purportedly mailed, but the insurance company sent a supposedly notice of non renewal. The initial reason being that they did not want to insure a house that had a deceased person on the deed.

I had no opportunity to tell them that there was still somebody living there full time, and that I was there frequently. Then I searched for insurance on the market and nobody wanted to insure the house, at least not in any transparent way. I got premium quotes about four times as much as what my mother had been paying for decades.

Brian Lehrer: Is this because of the location of the house on the North Shore?

Belena: They didn't say. First, the two quotes I got, I asked from the broker, can you send me a copy of the policy? The declarations page, that was not forthcoming. The second quote never got a response at all. I wanted to look and see what if we cancel in three months because we sell or do something? There was just no meaningful conversation, let's say, with the underwriters through the broker.

I went to the Department of Financial Services for New York State, which I know regulates the insurance industry. They have some secondary market for the black sheep who can't get insurance on the primary market. They have a program, but they only offer flood, lightning, disaster type insurance, and they do not offer any insurance for liability. For example, guests who come onto your property or into your home who get injured, which is a big deal for elderly people who need, which was my mother's case previously, who need home health aides to come into the home.

It seems-- I've asked around the Manhasset, this is the town Manhasset Quaker Meeting House, which is quite old, did the same thing. A notice of non renewal said that we needed to do several things to fix it. We started to do those. They put a drone over the roof. We spent money to fix the roof. They kept putting the goal further and further out. Then eventually after three months, still did not renew. We were essentially forced in that context to go get insurance that was just, again, like a blind quote. "We'll give you the declaration later after you pay the premiums."

Brian Lehrer: Yes, so many insurance horror stories of various kinds. That's interesting about how they didn't pay that much attention until your mother passed away. Then when the house changed hands in the family, they started looking at every shingle on the roof or whatever your roof is made of. Selena, thank you for your call. Susan in Bloomfield, I think, is going to go back a few years with a political fight that has maybe led to where they are today in this respect around there. Susan, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Susan: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I was part of a group that fought against development. They wanted to put 120 townhouses on a floodplain in town, and it took 20 years to convince them to do it. One of the reasons that we were successful is that we had the Great Recession. One of the developers backed out, and we got that property. Then later on we got a new mayor who agreed to this. Because of that experience, we were going to move a few years ago into western New Jersey, and there were houses that were along the river.

I said, we're not going to live in those houses. It's crazy. The other thing now that I've listened to your program is I have to read my insurance plan because I did get an increase, but I didn't look at it the way I got an increase.

Brian Lehrer: Susan, thank you very much. Finally, some coming in in texts. Listener writes, "Have a second home on the shore in Rhode Island. My rates quadrupled. Can't afford them, and will have to sell now." Someone else, "My home insurance has increased by $600 a year. I live in the Delaware Water Gap recreation area in Pennsylvania." Listener says,

"I live dead center in the middle of Long Island, nowhere near the water. My homeowner's insurance jumped up 40% even though I've never had a claim. When I called the insurance company, they told me climate change was the reason for the increase."

There you go. There are some stories. Thank you for helping us report the story on our Climate Story of the Week for today. The financial impacts, particularly climate-- I'm sorry, particularly homeowners insurance, financial impacts of climate change as it progresses in our area.

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