Environment & Energy

These changes — approved by the Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Jeff Landry — come at a time when households in many parts of the country are grappling with escalating property insurance premiums attributed to increased damage from climate-fueled storms and wildfires.

Nearly 125,000 homeowners have been forced to take policies through Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the state’s insurer of last resort, since there are so few options in the private sector. It's a huge increase since 2020, when the program had 34,373 policyholders.

But state-sponsored insurance doesn’t mean cheaper rates. Citizens is mandated to write policies that are at least 10% above the highest rates within each parish. State lawmakers suspended that 10% surcharge for the next three years for the vast majority of the state’s population, which is south of Interstate 10 on or near the Gulf Coast.

Temple said it won’t provide much relief given how unaffordable the state-backed policies already are. And Louisiana officials have been actively moving homeowners into private policies since 2008 to “depopulate” the state program.

“We need to get people out of Citizens, and the only way to do that is to have a competitive market,” Temple said. “The changes we made this session on the three-year rule and the claims process are major parts of a larger reform effort that is putting us on a path toward that competitive market.”