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CBS News
14-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
How State Farm's newest rate hike could impact Bay Area towns like Orinda
ORINDA — If you have home insurance from State Farm, you will soon be paying more. That's after an administrative law judge in Oakland endorsed an emergency rate hike for the largest insurer in the state. California's insurance crisis is affecting all areas of the state, but if there are places where the full depth of the problem can be felt, it's in towns like Orinda. In many places there, the trees grow over the road and homes are nestled in the forested hillsides. People pay a lot for the beauty, but lately, there's been something else on their minds. "This is part of the discussion now, you know, it's 'location, location, location," Tom Stack said. "So, now the 'location' part doesn't mean you're near the schools and the amenities and means, can I get out if there's a fire?" Stack is a real estate agent in Orinda. He won't even show a house unless the buyer shows some ability to insure it. He said just about every aspect of his business is now being driven by insurance — or rather, the lack of it. "What we know on a micro level in this area is that all of Orinda has been cut off. Swaths of Lafayette have been cancelled," he said. "And with State Farm having the largest footprint in town, if they were to leave, this would be a crisis definition." Stack said one of his clients was recently ordered by his insurance company to put stairs and handrails on a hill behind his house based solely on satellite images. "And all he did was say yes. It's going to cost him 20 grand. He said yes. He did not want to lose his insurance over it. So we are at their mercy, right now," Stack said. Following the Los Angeles firestorms, State Farm requested and is now being granted a 17% rate hike for every policyholder in the state, and 15% for renters and 38% for rental dwellings. In his ruling, Judge Karl Seligman referred to the rate hike as a "rescue mission to stabilize State Farm and safeguard policyholders." And almost immediately, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara "adopted" the judge's ruling, with the increase to begin on June 1. In a statement, Lara said, "I am balancing all the facts. Protecting all State Farm customers and the integrity of our insurance market is an urgent matter." But Grace Regullano doesn't feel protected at all. "I'm frankly infuriated that Commissioner Lara is standing with the insurance companies who are profiting off our crisis," she said. Regullano lives in Pasadena near the Eaton fire. Her home survived but now has such toxic levels of asbestos and lead that she cannot move back. She said State Farm has dragged its feet in paying claims, claiming its California affiliate company is broke, while ignoring the assets of its massive parent company. "Frankly, I feel furious," Regullano said. "I'm furious because we cannot 'rate hike' our way out of this climate-change caused insurance crisis. I'm also an accountant and I'm shocked that there's no explanation for why State Farm's parent company, which has 194 billion--with a B--in surplus and reserves, needs this rate hike." It may simply be a matter of political leverage. State Farm has become too big to fail. "We don't know what they're going to do," Stack said. "They may wake up one day and say, 'we're out of California.' And if that happens...I'll be talking to you again. It will be awful beyond words." There will still be a hearing for State Farm to show evidence of its financial situation, but that is planned for some time later this year. In the meantime, the rate hike will go into effect, starting in June. When other companies have already left the state, like a good neighbor, State Farm is still there. But the neighborhood is about to get a lot more expensive.
CBS News
07-05-2025
- CBS News
Orinda neighborhood paid for its own license plate reader cameras to deter crime
Residents in one East Bay community got so fed up with the number of burglaries and break-ins that they took matters into their own hands, paying to install their own license plate reader cameras. Now, those same residents are asking the city of Orinda to pick up the tab on their cameras and add 15 more. Evan Dreyer said there are at least a dozen neighbors who have surveillance video of burglars casing houses or breaking into homes in the Knickerbocker neighborhood of Orinda. "This is something that in this neighborhood we dealt with personally, not only myself but other people," he said. Dreyer said his home in Orinda was broken into in January 2024, and after that, he and his family no longer felt safe. "We understand that getting city governments and city budgets to do things sometimes can take time. This wasn't something we could wait around on so we wanted to lead by example," he said. Dreyer sent out emails to a bunch of his neighbors and asked if they'd be interested in paying for their own license plate reader cameras. In just a few days, he got 30 families to sign on. They installed 2 Flock cameras at the main entrances to the neighborhood at a cost of a little over $11,000 for a two-year contract, which came out to about $400 per family. "Like this car right here that's coming down right now, for example. It's going to automatically turn on, take a picture of this license plate, and if that car was a vehicle that was wanted, by the police, it would automatically give them an alert so they will now know, oh, he just crossed by Stein Way and they can do something," explained Dreyer. At the meeting on Tuesday night, the Orinda City Council is considering not only picking up the contract on the two cameras Evan and his neighbors paid for but also adding another 15 more. Privacy advocates have raised concerns in general about these license plate reader cameras because almost every law enforcement agency in the area can get access to the data. "What is the information being used for? And why is it OK for people's license plates to be captured indiscriminately by law enforcement when people driving down the road are really not breaking any laws," said Karen Gullo with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In Orinda, that hasn't seemed to slow down deployment. The city currently has a total of 19 cameras, and of those, only 7 were installed by the city. The other 12 were installed by neighborhood groups or HOAs. "I want to keep my neighbors and my neighborhood safe. Absolutely," said Scott Johnson. He said his HOA already paid for a camera at the entrance to their community. Johnson said while he thinks the city should pick up the tab, he's willing to foot the bill if necessary. "Fix the roads and fix the lights. Yes, we'd all like to see society work better, but a lot of our municipalities really don't seem to be following through," he said. CBS News Bay Area reached out to the mayor's office and the police chief for comment on the issue, and both refused our requests for interviews.
