Louisiana’s Insurance Crisis Is a Civil Rights Issue. Here Is the Proof.
By Jeff Thomas | Publisher, Black Source Media | Owner, WBOK 1230 AM
- Hurricane season started June 1. Forecasters predict a below-average year. One storm is all it takes.
- Louisiana homeowners pay an average of $4,031 a year for insurance. In Black neighborhoods — New Orleans East, Gentilly, the Lower Ninth Ward — many cannot get coverage at any price.
- 18% of home sales in New Orleans collapsed in early 2025 because buyers could not find affordable insurance.
- This is not a market failure. The Legislature had chances to fix it. They chose not to. That choice has an address — and it is in our neighborhoods.
Hurricane Season Is Here. And We Are Still Unprotected.
Hurricane season started June 1st. The forecasters at Colorado State University are predicting a below-average year — 13 named storms, 6 hurricanes, 2 major ones. That sounds reassuring until you remember what below-average means in the Gulf. It means nothing. One storm. That is all it takes.
And when that storm comes — when it forms in the Gulf in 36 hours the way the new storms do, when it intensifies overnight and makes landfall before you have finished packing — tens of thousands of Black homeowners in Louisiana will face it without adequate insurance coverage. Not because they chose to. Because the state chose for them.
The Numbers Tell the Story
The statewide average homeowners insurance premium in Louisiana reached $4,031 in 2024 — well above the national average. But in coastal and high-risk areas of New Orleans, the total annual cost of layered coverage — homeowners, flood, and windstorm — can reach $14,000 per year. That is not a premium. That is a second mortgage.
Roughly 18% of home sales under contract in New Orleans were canceled in February 2025 because buyers could not secure affordable insurance — up from 10% the year before. People are walking away from homes they wanted to buy because they cannot afford to protect them. That is not a market correction. That is displacement.
Historically Black and low-income neighborhoods — New Orleans East, Gentilly, and the Lower Ninth Ward — are experiencing the sharpest blow, with policy cancellations, soaring premiums, and unaffordable renewal rates forcing a rise in mortgage delinquencies and a growing wave of uninsured homes.
Read that again. Uninsured homes. In hurricane country. In Black neighborhoods. In 2026.
This Is a Policy Choice. Not Bad Luck.
I want to be clear about something because the Insurance Commissioner and the Legislature would prefer you see this differently. Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple acknowledges the state remains in a property insurance crisis while pointing to signs of progress. Progress. Black homeowners in New Orleans East are losing their coverage and Tim Temple is talking about progress.
The Legislature had choices. Louisiana lawmakers passed a law giving insurance companies more leeway to drop policyholders — repealing the three-year rule that once protected longtime customers. Consumer advocates warned it would hurt Black homeowners. The Legislature passed it anyway. Then almost nobody used the new law — proving, as HousingNOLA’s Andreanecia Morris put it plainly, that the three-year rule was not the problem.
So they removed a consumer protection that did not need removing, in a market already devastating Black neighborhoods, and called it reform. That is not incompetence. That is a choice about whose interests the state serves.
The Civil Rights Argument
Redlining was outlawed decades ago. But you do not need a red line on a map when insurance companies simply stop writing policies in Black neighborhoods and the state legislature refuses to stop them. The result is identical. Black homeowners cannot protect their property. Black wealth erodes. Black families leave. Between 2020 and 2023, the New Orleans metro area lost approximately 34,000 residents — driven in significant part by unaffordable insurance.
That is not a coincidence. That is policy producing a predictable outcome in a predictable place — our neighborhoods — while the Legislature debates whose fault it is.
Louisiana’s Insurance Industry Charges Poor Families More. One Senator Is Fighting to Change That.
Hurricane season is here. The storms are faster now and more dangerous. And Black homeowners in Louisiana are going into this season more exposed than they were before the Legislature spent two years on reform.
Call it what it is. This is a civil rights issue. And it deserves the same urgency we give everything else they are taking from us.
Jeff Thomas is the Publisher of Black Source Media and Owner of WBOK 1230 AM. He writes Sundays on politics, power, and the civic life of Black New Orleans and Louisiana.
- Big Easy Magazine — “How the Insurance Crisis Is Reshaping New Orleans Neighborhoods,” April 2025. bigeasymagazine.com
- NOLA.com — “Louisiana allowed insurers to drop more homeowners. Only one took advantage,” December 2025. nola.com
- Fox 8 Live — “Louisiana homeowners still trapped in insurance crisis as hurricane season begins,” June 2026. fox8live.com
- Colorado State University — 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season Forecast, April 2026.
Publisher — Black Source Media
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
