Tyler Perry is putting insurance companies on blast for “pure greed” after they dropped Southern California residents before the worst wildfires in U.S. history.
Source: Leon Bennett / Getty
As Tyler Perry joins the national effort to support California wildfire victims, he’s not letting the insurance companies off the hook for another disaster; thousands of uninsured homes. That’s not because they all dropped the ball like DDG, who didn’t have a policy on his now-destroyed L.A. mansion.
According to the L.A. Times, some couldn’t keep up with skyrocketing premiums, while insurance companies completely dropped others in high-risk areas.
“Chubb and its subsidiaries stopped writing new policies for high-value homes with higher wildfire risk in 2021. Allstate has stopped writing new policies in 2022, and Tokio Marine America Insurance Co. and its subsidiary Trans Pacific Insurance Co. pulled out of the state last year, though Mercury Insurance offered to take their customers,” the publication stated.
Perry didn’t hold back as he reflected on the people risking and losing their lives to protect their homes with garden hoses and buckets of water. He vowed to “do all I can to help as many I can” as he challenged big corporations refusing to do the same even after they got paid.
“Watching a daughter use a garden hose to try and protect her 90-year-old parents’ home because their insurance was canceled was just gut-wrenching to me,” he wrote on Sunday.
“Does anyone else find it appalling that insurance companies can take billions of dollars out of communities for years and then, all of a sudden, be allowed to cancel mIllions of policies for the very people they became rich on? People who have paid premiums all of their lives are left with nothing because of pure greed,” he continued, ending the message with continued prayer for everyone involved.
This tragic disaster has highlighted complex issues like climate change leading to unprecedented extreme weather, environmental racism, the historic loss of redlined Black neighborhoods, and incarcerated firefighters risking their lives for a few dollars a day.
With high winds fueling more barely contained flames, the crisis is far from over. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reports that more than 40,000 acres of California have burned in wildfires to date. According to The Wall Street Journal, the economic impact is estimated to be $50 billion. Dozens have truly lost everything with the updated death toll reaching 24.