Homeless Encampment Affecting Business Insurance Coverage

Only in California.

I have a clothing importer/distributor client in Los Angeles where we have seven different insurance policies/coverages spread out between six carriers.

We’ve been working on trying to find a standard carrier that would be willing to write their business auto, general/products liability, excess liability, property, and workers compensation insurance policies so that they’re packaged together with a single carrier.

Given the state of the hard insurance market, primarily the commercial auto and commercial property, I haven’t been having much luck getting underwriters to consider.

But there was a carrier that was willing to consider this one subject to loss control visit prior to offering quote terms.

Well the loss control inspection was formally done and lo and behold, the carrier declined to quote this for us. One of the primary reasons, because of the homeless encampment behind their building which sits off the train tracks.

Only in California.

If the property insurance market wasn’t tough enough already, a homeless encampment is preventing us from getting a carrier to offer coverage for my insured. Oh, they don’t even own the building. They’re a tenant. But it doesn’t matter with millions of dollars of contents sitting within the building.

This video encapsulates the carrier’s reasoning for declining to quote.

These homeless encampments notoriously burn. You see it all the time. As you can see in this video, the adjacent building is very exposed to the out of control fire and can easily catch fire as a result.

Super frustrating. Hard to believe the world we’re living in sometimes in California. This was a first for me in terms of getting declined by a carrier for this reason.

That’s it, that’s the post.

Thanks for reading.