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House Commerce panel lays over bill to create homeowners, commercial property insurance task force
Summary
The House Commerce Committee heard testimony supporting House File 2,228, a bill to create a statewide task force on homeowners and commercial property insurance. Committee members adopted two technical amendments and laid the bill over for possible inclusion in an omnibus package.
Representative Michael Elkins, author of House File 2,228, asked the House Commerce Committee to establish a state task force to study homeowners and commercial property insurance trends and recommend solutions.
The bill would create an interim task force to examine rising premiums, market exits, and coverage availability for homeowners associations, nonprofit housing providers and individual homeowners. “These 400% price increases on property and casualty insurance are becoming typical,” Representative Michael Elkins said, describing constituent contacts from condominium associations and nonprofit housing providers.
Supporters told the committee the problem is acute and growing. Mary Novak, executive director of Riverton Community Housing, said Riverton operates about 600 units of below‑market cooperative housing and has seen underwriting conditions deteriorate: “For our portfolio, we submitted as many as 50 applications to get just one quote with a high premium and deductible with less coverage overall. This has resulted in unsustainable premium growth.”
Kevin Pelkey, executive director of Lakes Area Habitat for Humanity, described premiums that have “consistently doubled and in some cases tripled” over the last 12 to 24 months, leaving some low‑income homeowners unable to afford renewals or find carriers willing to write new policies. Julia Nurbin, executive director of Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light, cited a single hailstorm event on Aug. 11, 2023 that she said produced roughly $1.8 billion in claims and argued that data collection and market analysis are needed to design interventions.
Paul Edgar, senior vice president for governmental affairs at the Minnesota Realtors Association, also urged support and noted that lack of available or adequate insurance can limit mortgage financing and homebuying opportunities.
Committee action: the panel adopted an A1 amendment described by the author as technical language improvements suggested by legislative staff, and then adopted an A2 amendment adding representatives from the Building Owners and Managers Association and the Minnesota chapter of the Community Associations Institute as stakeholders to include in drafting. After that action, the committee chair moved to lay House File 2,228 over for possible inclusion in an omnibus bill; the motion carried and the bill was laid over.
No formal policy decisions were made today; the committee limited testimony to two minutes per speaker and said the task force would meet over the interim if the bill advances. Representative Elkins said he had considered other ideas, including a reinsurance backstop, but presented the task force approach as a first step to “chew up these issues,” which he called more complicated than initially envisioned.
The bill will return later in the session if included in omnibus negotiations.
