Reporting by Carolina Public Press:
A proposed 19 percent increase in mobile home insurance premium rates in North Carolina is sending shudders through the state’s poorest citizens and the agencies and groups that serve them.
“I just pray,” Joyce Patton said.
Prayers are all the insurance that the McDowell County resident can afford on her mobile home right now, even without the proposed premium increases.
Rising rates caused Patton, a widowed grandmother raising two teenage grandchildren, one of whom has Down syndrome and is autistic, to drop her homeowner’s coverage. When there’s news of a strong storm on the way, she puts her trust in her faith to protect her home and family.
Patton lives near Nebo in McDowell County, one of the North Carolina counties with a high percentage of its population living in mobile or manufactured homes, at 31 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Any additional increase in insurance prices would be “terrible,” Patton said.
But the N.C. Rate Bureau recently applied for a 19 percent increase in premiums for homeowner casualty policies and 19.9 percent for home fire policies.
Read the rest of the story on the Carolina Public Press website.
Emailed public comment on the proposal can be submitted through March 20 to 2019MH@ncdoi.gov.
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