Texas Home Insurance Report: How Homeowners Pay More For Less While Insurers Profit
WATCH: State Democratic House Legislators Demand Gov. Abbott and State Regulators Act to Hold Home Insurers Accountable
**TEXAS — **Unlocking America’s Future (UAF) released a new Texas report titled ‘How Homeowners Pay More for Less While Insurers Profit.’ The report exposes the state’s insurance crisis and was discussed during a press call with Texas House of Representatives Minority Leader Rep. Gene Wu (D-Houston), Texas House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Rep. Mihaela Plesa (D-Plano), and State Representative Josey Garcia (D-San Antonio).
Homeowners across the nation are paying higher insurance premiums which provide less coverage as insurance corporations reap massive profits. Texas has become the third most expensive state for home insurance in the nation, fueling the state’s affordability crisis hammering Texans’ pocketbooks and household budgets.
Texas state representatives and UAF called for immediate reforms to provide relief for homeowners and demanded action by Texas Governor Abbott, Lt. Governor Patrick, and state insurance regulators to hold the insurance companies accountable after the report revealed how Texas home insurers have systematically denied nearly half of all claims while extracting record profits through premium increases. Since 2019, premiums have skyrocketed by 55%, forcing roughly one-third of low-income homeowners to go without coverage entirely.
A full recording of the call is available here.
“When Texans get hit with more storms and more floods, the help that we expect and the help that we've been paying into for years—hundreds of thousands of dollars being paid into these insurance companies over decades—when we need it, we get nothing,” said Texas House of Representatives Minority Leader Gene Wu. “For the past decade, when I've been in the legislature, we're fighting off all these bills that just put more and more power in the hands of insurance companies, in these corporations that are nickel and diming us to death. Republicans laugh in our faces.”
“Families are paying record premiums and when they finally need help, they're getting a letter instead of a check. That's not insurance, that's extraction. That's a system that's designed to pull maximum dollars out of Texas pockets and provide minimum protection when disaster strikes,” said Texas House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Mihaela Plesa. “I'm calling on Governor Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Patrick, and the Texas Insurance Commissioner to put constituents first and come to the table to work with the legislature to restore more meaningful penalties to wrongful claim denials, require real premium discounts for resilience construction like we see on the coast, bring transparency to claim denials and deductibles so Texans know which companies are actually paying when it counts. Texans keep our promises, and it's time for the insurance companies and the leaders of our state to keep theirs.”
“This feels criminal; this feels unjust. It’s unacceptable and we're not going to stand by while our senior citizens, our veterans and our families are losing their homes simply because they can't afford insurance,” explained Texas State Representative Josey Garcia. “Home insurance premiums in Texas are nearly double the national average and getting worse. Yet unlike other Gulf Coast states, Texas offers no guaranteed insurance discounts for homeowners who strengthen their homes against wind and storm damage, despite overwhelming evidence that such upgrades save insurers money and reduce property losses. The Alabama standard shows that when you have proper investment and discounts for homeowner upgrades, you have a 50% less likely chance of there being a claim when an actual storm comes in the first place.”
“This home insurance crisis didn't happen by accident. An insurance industry-backed law Texas passed made it harder for homeowners to hold insurers accountable for wrongfully denied claims and lowered penalties when they're caught denying legitimate claims. The result? Claim denials spiked, insurers profited, and Texans’ suffered. It’s past time for a fix that helps homeowners, not insurers bottomlines at policyholders expense,” Unlocking America’s Future Spokesperson Kyle Herrig concluded.
A Texas law passed in 2017 created a system where insurers face minimal consequences for denying legitimate claims. After the insurance industry spent hundreds of thousands of dollars funding a political group that lobbied for the legislation, claim denials spiked by 10 percentage points in a single year, demonstrating how quickly insurers adapted to their new freedom to deny claims without meaningful penalties. The legislation allowing home insurers to abuse the legal system was supported by Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a GOP-backed group that received $70,000 from the American Insurance Association between 2012 and 2017, with annual donations ranging from $10,000 to $15,000.
Unpaid home insurance claims in Texas have steadily increased from 35% in 2004 to 47% in 2024. This twenty-year trajectory shows a systematic shift in how insurers treat policyholders, with the most dramatic change occurring after the 2017 law reduced penalties for wrongful denials. Texas Governor Greg Abbott received over $700,000 from the insurance industry during his 2022 reelection campaign and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick received $460,000.
Read the full report titled ‘How Homeowners Pay More for Less While Insurers Profit.’