This is AM with your CC (hear shortened live read here)
Insurance companies are not making enough of a fortune. They found a really neat high-tech way to walk away from the obligations of their customers.
It's unethical. immoral. absurd silliness-- but at this point perfectly legal. Here's the trick
Insurance companies are flying drones over their clients homes, looking for a spec or two of unsightly moss, or anything else that they can find. If there is moss on the roof, they send the client a letter, demanding that the roof get replaced. The client often doesn't actually need a new roof, and of course such things are extremely expensive nowadays, and so the client refuses. (1)
And just like that the insurance company sends another letter saying, for failing to uphold your end of proper home maintenance, we can no longer serve you- Have a nice day.
I just found out about this last week from a roofer. It immediately at the ring of truth to it, because it is such a simple way to dump clients in a zone of the country that you'd like to get out of. And of course many insurance companies have already disengaged, pulling up anchor and getting the Blank out of California.
This is one of the dirtiest tricks I've ever heard of. It is a huge amount of power and the language centers around assessing clutter that could pose risks. But who determines what is risk and what is just a bit of mother nature?
Ultimately its the risk averse, penny-pinching, above the law insurance companies that get to make these decisions. And now that there are so few of them, if you are abused and go to court, you might win the claim battle but you will certainly lose the war as they dump you, and then you have no choice but to pay even more to the next company.
The ultimate winner here are the weirdos that run Sacramento. Their focus is sardine model multi family housing, the infamous 15 minute city concept of jamming everyone into little crackerjack monster apartment buildings. By having insurance companies abandon the middle class home owner, it is a slow steady march toward an impoverished class that lives in little cubbies, and a small rich class that can afford the new insurance that is forming on the horizon. Even worse, when the remaining insurance companies leave, the only answer will be the State moving in and covering everyone with a disastrous new socialist insurance that will be awful for everyone.
From my reading there is no legal requirement for insurance companies to even tell you if they are going to drone your home. There is no warning.(2)
Specific stories have come out that the imagery is often inaccurate,(3) but again as I pointed out, you can't exactly go to court on this.
The insurance inspectors are in short supply, and their independence is not actually proven at all. We are all learning that labels and licenses are often pretty much meaningless. That is something that the young generation is definitely on the right track about. Across all our institutions are absurd low standards and its affecting everything.
Stuff like this is the same dread I feel when I think about how eventually robots will replace the roll of traffic cops and they will either be fine-tuned to absurdly pull you over for everything, or they will be so lax that serious crime on the roadways flare up.
Sources
1) https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/working-for-you/insurance-companies-using-drone-images-to-drop-policies/509-c5058aa0-30bd-4843-84ed-92bff45edb99
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13444109/Home-Insurance-Drones-Policy.html
A good Reddit Thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/drones/comments/1byk31g/insurers_are_spying_on_your_home_from_the_sky/
Carriers that have fled or drawn down range-of-coverage: https://www.fox26houston.com/news/california-insurance-crisis-list-carriers-have-fled-reduced-coverage-state