AP reporters Sally Ho and Tran Nguyen uncovered how California’s wildfire crisis is deepening inequality in the state’s collapsing home insurance market.
With Ho’s expertise in national insurance issues and Nguyen’s coverage of state market stabilization efforts—along with data analysis by Aaron Kessler—they focused on the disparity between homeowners with private insurance and those forced onto the state’s FAIR Plan.
Ho’s determined outreach led her to homeowner Chris Wilson, whose financial struggles starkly contrasted with his neighbor, Louise Hamlin, who still had private coverage. Through sensitive interviews and rigorous fact-checking, they exposed the growing divide in climate-driven insurance coverage.
Nguyen secured critical FAIR Plan data and pressed state officials for accountability, while Jae Hong and Eugene Garcia provided striking visuals of the devastation. Unlike other coverage of California’s insurance crisis, their reporting uniquely compared real homeowners’ experiences, weaving expert analysis with human-centered storytelling to highlight the real-world stakes of a failing system.
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