Sponsors (11)
The resolution documents how rising disaster-related insurance costs threaten housing affordability and mortgage access—providing evidence that could spur targeted relief—while highlighting that many homeowners, especially in high-risk states, face sharply higher premiums that risk pricing them out, increasing defaults, and potentially shifting costs to taxpayers.
Homeowners, borrowers, and policymakers gain clear evidence that rising disaster losses and extreme state insurance premiums threaten housing affordability, creating political momentum for federal or state policy responses.
Homeowners and middle-class families benefit from greater public awareness that escalating premiums hurt affordability, which supports potential economic policy action to curb insurance costs or expand relief.
Borrowers and consumer advocates gain documentation that most lenders require insurance, highlighting systemic risk to mortgage approval and strengthening justification for policies to protect borrowers from unaffordable coverage mandates.
Homebuyers in high-risk states (e.g., Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma) may be effectively priced out of homeownership because annual insurance premiums reach several thousand dollars or more.
Homeowners generally face higher housing costs as insurance premiums consume a larger share of mortgage payments (now over ~20% in some cases), worsening overall housing affordability.
Rising premiums could increase mortgage defaults or prompt lenders to pull back lending if insurance requirements remain, damaging local housing markets and access to credit.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
States findings that insured losses and insurance premiums have risen sharply, raising mortgage costs and producing very high state premium averages.
Introduced December 17, 2025 by Sheldon Whitehouse · Last progress December 17, 2025
States findings that insured losses from natural disasters and homeowner insurance costs have risen sharply in recent decades, creating large increases in premiums and higher mortgage payments for many borrowers. It highlights national and state-level figures showing annual insured losses now exceed $100 billion, premiums growing faster than inflation, and very high average premiums in several states. Notes emphasize that insurance costs have more than doubled from 2013–2022, comprised over 20% of mortgage payments by 2022 in some cases, and that most mortgage lenders require borrowers to buy insurance—factors that affect home affordability and mortgage access for many households.