California’s fire insurance crisis might be at a peak [Video]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s housing market affects the state’s entire economy and everyone from homeowners to renters.

Right now, however, an insurance crisis is threatening to destabilize all that. Homeowners insurance is increasingly unaffordable and unavailable.

Two months after that announcement, what has changed? ABC10 has been tracking this growing crisis for years now and spoke 1-on-1 with Commissioner Lara.

“We’re at a critical stage, when it comes to the availability and affordability of insurance,” Lara said. “Having an uninsurable state is not an option.”

If you own a home, you probably have a mortgage. Lenders generally require homeowners to have fire insurance, which we’ll refer to as ‘homeowners insurance’ throughout this story.

In the past two years, most of the major companies in California’s homeowners insurance market have paused or restricted new business, causing availability to plummet and prices to go up.

“We are seeing these …