New Report: Rising Insurance Costs Are Fueling America’s Housing Crisis
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 14, 2026
Contact: contact@insurancefairnessproject.com
New Report: Rising Insurance Costs Are Fueling America’s Housing Crisis
The Climate and Community Institute (CCI) released a new report, Insurance: The Hidden Market Force Threatening Affordable Housing, warning of escalating costs and shrinking availability of residential property insurance, further deepening the nation’s housing affordability crisis, not just for homeowners, but for the more than 44 million renters across the United States.
The report finds that multifamily housing developers and operators are facing sharply rising premiums for property and liability insurance, paired with increasing difficulty in securing adequate coverage, if at all. These obstacles are driving up operating costs, delaying new construction, and forcing difficult trade-offs that negatively affect renters.
“Affordable housing providers are being forced into impossible choices by an increasingly unstable insurance market,” said Alexandra Casey, research fellow at CCI and lead author of the report. “As insurers raise rates, affordable housing providers are left with fewer options, tighter budgets, and growing pressure to cut back on the very investments that keep housing safe, resilient, and affordable.”
Key Findings:
The insurance crisis is hampering the development and viability of America’s affordable housing supply, with insurance costs increasing more than 75% for the average multifamily unit since 2019.
Insurers have significant, disproportionate power over what gets built, serving as a de facto “permitting authority.”
Housing operators are postponing building upgrades and green retrofits, often indefinitely, because of rising insurance costs.
Insurance costs for multifamily rental properties across the country are increasing roughly three times faster than total operating costs, with especially fast increases in the Southeast.
These major insurance challenges are also compounding existing housing system barriers, including volatile construction costs, tax credit limitations, strict zoning constraints, and rising material prices. Without intervention, these pressures could further restrict housing supply and worsen affordability nationwide.
The report also resurfaced an issue with the lack of easily accessible data from state insurance regulators and private data providers on multifamily insurance costs. This lack of data transparency is an ongoing hurdle across the insurance ecosystem, from cat modeling to nonrenewals. A spokesperson from a city housing preservation district told researchers that insurers’ rating and underwriting criteria for affordable housing were “a black box” and “not particularly precise.”
“This report makes clear that leaving insurance markets unchecked is undermining our housing system,” said TJ Helmstetter, a spokesperson for the Insurance Fairness Project. “Policymakers need to step in to stabilize costs, expand access to coverage, and protect homeowners and renters from bearing the brunt of this growing crisis.”
The report comes on the heels of two recent studies underscoring the importance of affordable housing as we grapple with the climate crisis. In March, a perspective published in the Nature Sustainability journal suggested that relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately. Doing so would require affordable housing. Last month, UCLA published four studies highlighting the role of climate change and displacement on homeless populations across the United States, and that risks to both those who lose housing because of disasters and those already living without shelter should be the focus of recovery planning.
Read Insurance: The Hidden Market Force Threatening Affordable Housing.
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