Things To Do In SW Florida

How badly does state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp. want to depopulate?

So badly that in addition to participating with private-market insurers in a “takeout” program, the residual insurer is trying to remove customers out of policies that haven’t even begun.

And it’s doing so with confusing letters and questionable premium estimates that ensure the policyholder must take the private-market offer — at least for now.

State officials make no secret of the fact they don’t want Citizens Property Insurance Corp. to remain anywhere near its current 1.18 million policies.

It doesn’t want to carry so much risk and it doesn’t want to assess non-Citizens customers if a huge disaster prevents the company from paying its claims out of its own pile of money.

That’s why it participates in a depopulation program that shifts policies onto private market insurers.

But it would help to clearly explain to targeted policyholders what’s going on.

Scott Bassett, an Orlando homeowner with Citizens coverage, recently found himself plunged so deeply into Citizens’ depopulation rabbit hole that by the time he received his third takeout notice in seven months, he didn’t know what he was looking at or how to respond. read more

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER (AP Economics Writer)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Since retiring two years ago, Joan Harris has upped her travel game.

Once or twice a year, she visits her two adult children in different states. She’s planning multiple other trips, including to a science fiction convention in Scotland and a Disney cruise soon after that, along with a trip next year to neolithic sites in Great Britain.

“I really have more money to spend now than when I was working,” said Harris, 64, an engineer who worked 29 years for the federal government and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Back then, she and her now-ex-husband were paying for their children’s college educations and piling money into savings accounts. Now, she’s splurging a bit and, for the first time, is willing to pay for first-class plane tickets. She plans to fly business class to Scotland and has arranged for a higher-level suite on the cruise.

“I suddenly realized, with my dad getting old and my mom dying, it’s like, ‘No, you can’t take it with you,’ ” she said. “I could become incapacitated to the point where I couldn’t enjoy something like going to Scotland or going on a cruise. So I better do it, right?” read more