Following up on the role of insurance in PF Housing:
It's not enough to keep lists for RENTERS. This is also an issue for HOMEOWNERS.
We've had several former adopters who are homeowners contact us because their homeowners insurer notified them that they no longer would write coverage on our particular breed (German Shepherd Dogs) -- the letter basically said get rid of the dog by X date, or the policy wouldn't be renewed. We were able to give them a couple of suggestions to shop coverage to different insurers who WOULD write coverage for homes with German Shepherds, but the list is dwindling.
There is NO easy nationwide answer to this. Liberty Mutual covered GSDs in my state, but not in the neighboring one. Allstate and SF similarly covered them in some states but not others. So it's pointless to have a list that says "State Farm works" (because they cover might X breed in Texas but not Louisiana)! USAA has no breed restrictions, but one needs a military connection (even a parent who served in Vietnam would work...but they have to be alive to confer USAA membership). Meanwhile, many insurers are not writing new coverage along the Gulf Coast due to hurricanes, and in California due to wild fires and other losses--which makes it even harder to find a solution.
Some might be tempted to advise "just don't tell the insurer about the dog." That's a good way to get your rescue/shelter sued into bankruptcy for giving that advice. Why? Rescission. Many states allow insurers to retroactively cancel (rescind) a policy for a material omission at renewal -- meaning you don't tell them about something important (like a banned-breed dog), and then they get to later declare the policy void because they wouldn't have issued the policy if they'd known all of the true facts. The policy has a ticking time bomb for them to retroactively cancel after ANY loss -- even an unrelated one--if you don't disclose the dog. So the house burns down due to an electrical fire, the adjuster realizes there was an undisclosed dog in the home, BAM! Suddenly you have no insurance, despite paying premiums, because they trigger the rescission clause due to nondisclosure of a material risk (i.e., the dog).
Some carriers will let people exclude the dog from the policy (meaning no coverage if there's a bite), and then people have to go on the excess market to look for "dog bite" insurance on top of homeowners (cost depends on breed, training, and bite history). I know a lady who did that and didn't buy the extra coverage -- a pretty minor run-in with a neighbor that didn't even break the skin resulted in a 5-figure cash settlement that they had to pay out of pocket, since homeowners policy had excluded the dog. So, yeah, the coverage is important.
It would be very useful for someone to compile a 50-state list of the homeowners insurance carriers writing coverage for GSDs, Rotties, Dobes, Akitas, Chows, Mastiffs, PBs, etc. -- commonly excluded breeds. If there are national options other than USAA with no breed bans, that would be great to know -- but just knowing they don't have a restriction in YOUR state doesn't mean that they don't have one in OTHER states, so it really has to be done state by state. I guess I'd add this to the list of "NEEDED" resources!
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Maggie Thomas
President
Red Stick German Shepherd Rescue
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