NEW YORK, NY (February 5, 2026) – Today, Enterprise Community Partners released a new report examining how rising insurance costs, shrinking coverage, and weather and natural disaster risk are threatening the stability and preservation of affordable housing across the United States. The report, titled “Curbing the Insurance Spiral: Policy and Practitioner Strategies to Help Stabilize Multifamily Affordable Housing,” examines how rising insurance costs and coverage constraints are creating significant operational challenges for affordable housing providers nationwide. The report also provides proactive steps mission-based developers can take to minimize insurance challenges and offers policy and market-based solutions to stabilize coverage and protect affordable homes.
“These insurance pressures represent a serious threat to all housing, but have hit affordable housing especially hard,” said Shaun Donovan, Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Community Partners. “When premiums rise this sharply, providers are forced into impossible choices—deferring maintenance, cutting resident services, raising rents, or selling the properties. Each of these outcomes undermines housing stability for families and communities nationwide, and growing insurance challenges underscore the need for coordinated reforms that strengthen the housing industry. This report shows clear ways to reduce the insurance crisis’s impact on progress in affordable housing and reaffirms our commitment to supporting mission-driven developers in their vital work.”
Enterprise’s analysis finds that mission-based affordable housing providers have faced dramatic insurance premium increases and continue to experience coverage exclusions and insurer withdrawals that strain already lean operating margins. Nearly one-third of affordable housing providers saw insurance premiums rise by 25 percent or more in a single year in 2023, with some experiencing increases of 30 percent, 100 percent, or even 500 percent.
The report documents how insurance costs have caused financial distress, delayed new development, and contributed to the failure of some mission-driven developers. These pressures could reduce housing supply when the U.S. already faces an estimated gap of 7.1 million available, affordable rental homes for extremely low-income renters. The report highlights how rising costs are particularly acute in climate-exposed regions, where insurers are increasingly exiting markets or sharply increasing deductibles, which exposes owners to financial risk.
Enterprise’s report offers a deep dive into the insurance drivers and practical solutions that both housing practitioners and policymakers can use to address rising costs. The practitioner toolkit provides owners with risk management techniques, insurance purchasing strategies, and financial planning tools that can help mitigate near-term pressure. The policy toolkit provides lawmakers and advocates with potential levers for increasing resilience, improving the health of the insurance market, and lowering premiums at the federal, state, and local levels.
The report finds that targeted interventions can keep properties from becoming uninsurable or unaffordable. Enterprise’s analysis underscores that climate resilience investments are particularly essential to stabilizing insurance markets and keeping communities whole. Upgrades such as stronger roofs, modernized electrical and HVAC systems, improved drainage, and wildfire mitigation measures can reduce risk, lower long-term costs, and help families remain safely housed, even if evacuation is required during adverse events.
The report also identifies data transparency as a key barrier, preventing practitioners and lawmakers from knowing what improvements are considered by insurers in the affordable housing market. On the other hand, insurers may also have inconsistent or incomplete data on building conditions, loss history, and mitigation efforts, which increases underwriting uncertainty and drives up costs.
Nonpartisan Solutions to Stabilize Insurance Markets
As state governments across the political spectrum grapple with unaffordable insurance premiums, insurer exits, and growing climate risk, the policy toolkit outlines a framework to stabilize the insurance market, increase competition, and reduce costs.
The report outlines a range of policy considerations, including:
- Exploring a federal reinsurance or catastrophe backstop for affordable housing or drawing solutions from federal risk-sharing programs
- Reevaluating Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other lender insurance requirements
- Incentivizing resilience investments—such as flood mitigation and other retrofits—that lower insurance costs
- Increasing market competition across insurance providers
- Improving the quality of data and transparency in underwriting
- Enabling states to support insurance captives and providing temporary operating relief for providers facing premium shocks
- Examining tort and liability considerations, such as higher thresholds for bringing claims against affordable housing providers
The full report is available at enterprisecommunity.org/curb-insurance.
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About Enterprise Community Partners
Enterprise is a national nonprofit that exists to make a good home possible for the millions of families without one. We support community development organizations on the ground, aggregate and invest capital for impact, advance housing policy at every level of government, and build and manage communities ourselves. Since 1982, we have invested $80.9 billion and created 1 million homes across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands – all to make home and community places of pride, power, and belonging.
