2025-03-07
19 分钟I'm Rukmini Kalimaki and I'm a real estate reporter for the New York Times.
Sometime late last year, I was chatting with my colleague Michael Forsyth and the.
Conversation turned to insurance.
We all pay for it and we.
All assume it's going to be there when we need it.
Michael and my other colleague Walt Bogdanich had just written a book that included an entire chapter
on insurance.
How a series of corporate changes that date to the 1990s have changed how claims are paid
out to families when they have lost their homes
or when they have undergone a catastrophic accident.
I went and got their book and tore through it and I was just floored.
If your house burns down or if it's wiped out in a hurricane or thrashed in a tornado,
the expectation is that after years, possibly decades of paying premiums,
you should be able to rebuild thanks to your insurance coverage.
What I've learned is that for a lot of people that's not always the case.
Fast forward to two months ago on January 7,
more than 16,000 homes and structures were obliterated in the LA wildfires.
I was among the reporters that headed out to the burn zone
and I. Published a story about how damages get.
Reported to insurance companies.