Living in Lava Zone 2

[MyManao]

Study on why we live in high risk lava zones.

https://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2021/...velopment/

The one thing missing from that study is any mention of HPIA. Again, the link I included in my last post..

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/390...ster-worse

Which explores how Hawaii created our lava "disaster" but providing insurance where the private sector, on its own, would not.

From that article...

"In 1991, the Hawaii Legislature created the Hawaii Property Insurance Agency (HPIA). In theory it was intended to be a nonprofit insurance carrier of “last resort,” formed to provide property insurance to those who lived in Lava Zones 1 and 2 and couldn’t get insurance on the private market.

Private insurance companies must join HPIA if they want to do business in the state. As part of HPIA, they contribute to a pool that shares the expenses, losses, and profits of the association in proportion to their market share of casualty and property insurance written in the state.

Of course, insurers have a mechanism to help them cope with the expense of participating in HPIA — the age-old method of passing costs on to their customers. In essence, property owners across Hawaii end up subsidizing the cost of this high-risk insurance though their own high rates.

But HPIA did work — if you consider encouraging people to live beside an active volcano to be a success. By 2008, there were approximately 2,400 HPIA policies in the region, representing $700 million worth of insurance for an area that should have been uninsurable."