And if you are a J6 insurrectionist, you just shit on the floor, wherever you are.
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Coming late to this conversation, but that was what struck me. At least in MA, I don’t think a bank will (is permitted to, by state law?) give you a mortgage unless you have arranged for, and pledge to maintain, home owner’s insurance. But I could be confusing what sane property owners do with what banks/state laws require. I do know that, in MA, you can’t register a car without first showing proof that you have insured it (all those funny trips hither, thither, and yon, to this office and that, when you buy a car and finally get your plates), though that may be more about ensuring that the medical costs will be covered when a person is injured due to your negligent driving. I dunno. I’m content not to know.
James Wood is a fine actor but a self-absorbed (probably full blown narcissistic) mess of a human being. It’s not just his politics. Two very short-lived marriages (his third began too recently to tell), lots of trivial lawsuits, other junk indicating his overblown sense of self-importance.
We had paid off our mortgage some 8 years ago. We finally got our home equity line of credit (acquired before paying off our mortgage) renewed by lowering the amount we could borrow. (We’d set a higher amount that we ever thought we’d use because – I don’t know why. The bank never informed us that the limit we’d requested might matter.) We were renewing after some ten or fifteen years of a perfect record with our initial home equity loan. (We plan to use it for cash flow convenience and other types of short-term convenience now and then – RMD timing enters into the thinking.) The bank required an endless production of documents (often, the same documents more than once – someone hadn’t scanned all the pages we’d submitted, or something). The person we dealt with in person had to pass everything by the mythical “Theresa,” who, I decided, conducts her work from the side of an infinity pool in Timbuktu. As my hairdresser put it – over the last few years she’s bought the hair salon and a house – the next thing the bank will be asking for is one of your kidneys.
Is this just Massachusetts?
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I’m not sure what state laws require, and to what extent banking regulations are state laws: I have a doctorate in Statistics, neither a J.D. nor an LL.D. (My guess is that banking regulations are administrative law rather than statutory law, but it’s only a guess.)
In any event, fiduciary prudence requires a lender to secure any sizeable loan (where sizeable is probably measured on all of several scales–size of loan relative to borrower’s assets, the size of the loan relative to the lender’s portfolio, and the size of loan as an absolute number are three I can think off the top of my head). A loan that is “large” on any of those metrics is going to require security and protection of the value of the asset itself.
In a sane regulatory environment, the regulations would codify some minimum practices which banks are allowed to exceed.
So, regardless of what Ohio banking regulations may require, CitiBank (who hold our mortgage) requires us to maintain adequate insurance. Because it’s a condominium, CitiBank monitors both the HOA’s insurance (covering the building and grounds) and our homeowner’s policy (which covers the interior and attached/detached structures for our private use, like the decks, patio, and garage and covers our share of the HOA deductible (up to 1/4 of the deductible, if I recall). CitiBank feels so strongly about this that they pay the homeowner’s premium from the escrow account so they know for-sure-for-sure that the premiums are paid.
I read more later that indicated that Woods was one of the unfortunates in California whose homeowner’s policy was cancelled, so I suppose he might have a mortgage and happened to be in the process of finding a new insurer. I can’t imagine that CitiBank would give me four months to get that lined up, but my name isn’t James Wood and my insurer hasn’t cancelled my policy.
In any event, it sucks to be James Wood right now. On the other hand, the LA basin chapparal land is a fire-dominated ecosystem. It is going to burn, because those are the plants that are adapted to live in that environment. The choices are pretty stark: you can have relatively frequent low-intensity fires or (if you allow fuel to build up) you can have occasional conflagrations. The US Forest Service, CalFire, and the Southern California County FDs have jointly opted for occasional conflagrations. I did my first two years of my undergrad Biology degree at Chaffey College which was then up high in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. My botany and ecology professors were both railing about the terrible choices that fire-fighting agencies were making then (mid 1970s). We are still paying the price for that neglect of duty. You can bet that your homeowner’s insurance rates are going to go up as the result of these fires nationally–it’s not going to be limited to California.
ETA: Chaffey College’s main campus is still high in the foothills of what is now Rancho Cucamonga (then it was Alta Loma). It’s just surrounded by housing and a strip mall now instead of chapparal. But my sequoia (my favorite tree on campus) outside the old Life Sciences Building was still there the last time I was on campus. About 15 years ago it looked like a young sequoia instead of the World’s Biggest Christmas Tree.
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Thank you for your fulsome reply. It certainly makes sense that any bank would require the homeowner to insure the property on which it holds the mortgage since that property is surety for the mortgage loan.
I didn’t realize that Woods’ insurance policy had been cancelled. I recall reading elsewhere that some 70% of the policies in Palisades had been cancelled. What happens when a person hasn’t yet paid off their mortgage, their insurance is cancelled, and they cannot find any company willing to insure them?
I have vague memories of a period – probably the mid-'70’s you speak of but also later – when there was a good deal of public discussion of the best ways to handle threats of fire. The advisability of controlled burns, for instance, and of sometimes letting fires just burn.
I think it was Yosemite that John Muir visited some years after he had succeeded in getting it set aside as a national park. He was very upset that the beautiful, “natural” views under the trees had become obscured by undergrowth. That “natural” beauty he missed had actually resulted from Native American controlled burns. From the Wikipedia article on Yosemite Nat’l. Park:
Indigenous residents intentionally set small fires in the early 1860s and before to clear the ground of brush as part as their farming practices.[22] These fires are comparable to contemporary practices such as controlled burns that are done by the U.S. Forest Service and others. Although it was not their primary reason, Yosemite Natives helped preserve biodiversity and resilience by lighting these small fires. Native Americans used fire as an early wildlife management tool to keep certain lands clear, resulting in more food for large animals and decreasing the chance of large forest fires which that now devastate forest ecosystems.[123] Some early uncontrolled forest fires were set accidentally by the militia group led by Major John Savage when the group burned down the Ahwahneechee camp in an attempt to expel them. The house fires eventually spread to a large section of the forest and the militia group ended up having to abandon their raid to save their own camp from the conflagration.[123]
The sequoia at Chaffey’s main campus… Funny how certain trees remain fixed in our memories. For me, several trees in the yard I grew up in, and a beautiful American chestnut on a knoll down the street. (I’m fortunate ever to have seen one.) The giant tree, a great beauty, near my grandparents’ back door. A huge magnolia by the library at Sweet Briar College, when I had occasion to visit the campus for a few days many years ago.
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I know that I tend to rattle on sometimes, but this is how I bring myself to understanding some things and understanding how I feel about those things. Believe it or not, I often cancel a long screed rather than posting it here.
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I wasn’t be facetious. I really did appreciate your reply in its thoroughness!
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