(The Center Square) – A single-payer, homeowners insurance program is being proposed by California’s newly elected insurance commissioner, Jane Kim.
She told The Center Square on Tuesday afternoon that the program would not cost taxpayers any money.
Kim, a Democrat who was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said during a victory speech last week that she wants to implement the program so that homeowners can be adequately reimbursed for their claims when their homes are damaged or destroyed in wildfires, which are increasingly common across the state.
Kim will take office Jan. 4, succeeding Commissioner Ricardo Lara, who has been in the office since January 2019.
“We have to make insurance affordable, available and fair. Otherwise, we’re shutting everyday Californians out of our economy,” Kim told supporters. “They [insurance companies] have been profiting for way too long by raising our premiums, canceling our coverage and fighting our claims, and we are going to make it again a system that protects us.”
Kim told The Center Square on Tuesday afternoon that the inspiration for her proposal came from how other countries such as Spain, France and New Zealand handle homeowners insurance claims during floods and fires. The program she proposed would work in a similar way, in which a single-payer system would replace the current system of private companies insuring homes in the event of a catastrophe.
Currently, California’s homeowners spend $18 billion insuring their homes, with $3 billion to $6 billion going toward just wildfire coverage. That money could go to the state instead of private companies, Kim said.
“We would take those dollars, and we would invest it, just like the private market does,” Kim told The Center Square. “We would take excess profits and excess capital, and we would drive it back into our communities to make it safer in the form of mitigations, flood-proofing and fire-proofing, and funding public infrastructure projects that make our communities safer and make sure that less homes are destroyed in the future by these catastrophic events.”
According to Kim’s campaign website, her plan aims to institute a single-payer natural disaster insurance policy for homeowners. This would go beyond what the already-established California FAIR Plan pays to homeowners who can’t get insurance for their homes anywhere else.
She also proposed enforcing smoke damage claims homeowners submit to the California FAIR Plan, make premiums pay for claims and pay for safety improvements to homes, among other facets of her proposal.
Republican Minority Leader Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, told The Center Square on Tuesday that he was concerned about the costs to taxpayers if Kim instituted a single-payer homeowners insurance program.
“In the interest of taxpayers, I think to take on that kind of risk makes no sense,” Niello told The Center Square. “I don’t have a preferred solution. Largely it affects the same people, whether it’s ratepayers or insurance companies that pay rates. I look at it as a bit of Gordian knot, and we have to tackle that, but I think to have taxpayers guarantee it is a bridge too far.”
State lawmakers grappled with the issue all year, introducing and debating legislation in 2026 that aimed to make insurance companies explain why homeowners’ insurance policies are getting canceled, stabilize the insurance market and combat wildfires in highly-residential areas, according to previous reporting by The Center Square. Some of those bills were passed, such as Senate Bill 876, introduced by Sen. Steve Padilla, D-Chula Vista, which added protections for homeowners after submitting a claim. Others, like SB 1162, authored by Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, D-Modesto, died in committee earlier this year.
The issue has become especially pressing this year after the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County destroyed thousands of homes, leaving many embattled homeowners to face delayed or denied insurance claims that prevented them from rebuilding their homes or buying property elsewhere.
Democratic lawmakers on the insurance committees in the California Senate and Assembly declined to comment or did not respond to The Center Square before press time on Tuesday.
