Facing soaring insurance rates and fewer and fewer coverage options, a group of affordable housing owners are starting their own insurance collective in an attempt to save tens of millions of dollars across roughly 80,000 New York City apartments.
In an interview in May, a month before his death, Ravitch told Gothamist he wanted to create a new model for insurance since carriers were hiking rates and“It’s a form of redlining,” Ravitch said. “We’re trying to fix it by creating a whole structure to provide insurance so the owner will have the same protections they had before and won’t pay these crazy premiums they’ve been forced to pay.
Workforce Housing Group founder John Crotty, a former Bloomberg administration official, is serving as a spokesperson for the collective and said the model will provide stability, without spiking rates. The group is circulating financial documents that put the estimated insurance rate at $500 per unit — less than half of what some affordable housing owners are now paying insurers to cover their personal liability claims, like slip-and-fall lawsuit settlements. Each member will pay based on the number of units they need to cover, Crotty said.