Republicans in Florida have been vigorously waging the culture wars, defending the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, ranting against critical race theory, and punishing Disney for not supporting their agenda, from far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis to the GOP-controlled Florida State Legislature.

In a scathing essay published on May 19, Washington Post opinion writer Lisette Alvarez says that Florida Republicans have been so focused on owning the liberals that they have overlooked a very serious problem: the state’s “property insurance catastrophe.”

The scenario is so “dire,” according to Alvarez, that DeSantis has “called state lawmakers back into a special session,” which will begin on Monday, May 23. Property owners in Florida are experiencing a combination of canceled policies and significant premium increases.

Republicans in the Florida State Legislature, Alvarez observes, “squandered weeks of the regular session trying to control what teachers and corporations can say and do instead of addressing a mess that alarms millions of Floridians: a meltdown in the home insurance market.”

“Let’s look at what Floridians face: skyrocketing property insurance premiums, up 25% from 2020 to 2021 on average, but in some cases tripling in one year, according to the Insurance Information Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit trade group that tracks industry trends,” Alvarez writes. “The average cost of homeowner’s insurance in Florida was $3600 in 2021, double the rate for the rest of the country. That’s if you can even get insurance.”

Alvarez further says, “In the past 12 months, more than 400,000 Florida home policies have been dropped, most of them in the past 90 days, according to the Institute. One insurance holding company, this week, announced 68,200 cancellations.”

Mark Friedlander, the spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, has declared Florida as the “most volatile property insurance market in the country,” warning that it is “headed for collapse.”