Why You Need Renter’s Insurance
There are so many disasters that could befall a renter in the Bay Area. The neighbor could be a quack who tries to convert their apartment into a capsule hotel. You could fall asleep with a lit joint and lose everything to a house fire. The wind could blow an old, stately Black Acacia into your house. The winter rains could cause flooding that swamps your place with fecal matter thanks to our outdated combined sewer system. Now that you’re nice and scared…
This woman looks like she’s been through some stuff.
Imagine the Big One hits. You have renter’s insurance, so everything’s fine, right? Wrong. Listen to us. You HAVE TO listen to us. Are you listening? Earthquake damage isn’t covered under most renter’s insurance policies. You need to add it as additional coverage.
Let’s back up. You probably don’t have renter’s insurance, do you?
What’s Renter’s Insurance, Precious?
Close your eyes and imagine a catalog of all of your shit. We bet you have some nice stuff. Vinyls your ex left that you wouldn’t dare resell at the record store. A TV you’re a little embarrassed to have hanging above the mantel because an interior design friend told you it’s gauche. Some fine art an old friend traded you for helping them design their website.
Quality hiking boots with last year’s mud stains. A fabulous coat you wear when it rains. A cast iron that’s seen better days. A collection of books about ghosts. A mirror from the thrift. Your beat up laptop. A broken-springed couch. Stained wedding dress. Divorce papers. Dildo.
Stuff you could replace if you had to. But you’re sentimental and practical, so you hold onto it.
Now imagine an earthquake rattles through the Bay Area. In the moment, a few books tumble off the shelf and your lights flicker, but nothing major seems amiss. And then you walk into your kitchen. The refrigerator walked halfway across the floor. The oven’s glass door is shattered. And all of your precious [INSERT FUNNY COLLECTOR’S ITEM HERE] are trashed.
Your landlord has home insurance. It’s required, even if it’s getting harder to get here in California. It’ll cover the appliances because they’re not considered personal property. But that doesn’t cover your glorious, irreplaceable SHIT. That’s why you should get renter’s insurance with earthquake coverage.
That Black Acacia crashed into your kitchen and now your apartment has been deemed uninhabitable. Your landlord doesn’t live in town and arranging repairs is going to take a hot minute. In the meantime, you need to find somewhere else to live.
In many parts of the Bay Area, the weather is perfect and you never leave a lit object unattended. No fire in the fireplace; just old New Yorkers and a tangle of holiday lights. But your mother-in-law comes to visit and slips on the wet floor in front of the kitchen sink, injuring her back. She could sue, you know…
So what’s a renter to do? Enter insurance. Like getting a pilot’s license or growing your own fava beans, it’s not mandatory, it sounds complicated, and it costs money, so we’re not going to assume you know anything about it. (Side note: A pilot’s license is very much mandatory in the unlikely scenario that you are planning on operating a plane.)
Policy? Liability? What Does it MEAN?
Personal property, loss of use, and personal liability are the three types of renter’s insurance you’ll encounter. To recap, personal property covers the shot glasses IF you have earthquake coverage added on to your policy; loss of use covers a stay in a motel; personal liability covers your clumsy and litigious mother-in-law.
Renter’s insurance comes in the form of a yearly policy. It’s an agreement you come to with an agency. Every year you pay a fee to extend the agreement. This is a premium, and it costs maybe a hundo, probably less than the cost of new airpods. Then if something bad happens, you file a claim, which is a record of what happened and why you need money. You pay a deductible, which is like your portion of the cost to repair or replace whatever’s been damaged. Then the insurance company pays the rest up to a certain amount depending on your coverage.
In the grand scheme of human history, renter’s insurance is a relatively new invention. But with climate change causing more natural disasters, absentee landlords saturating SF, and interpersonal tension heightening the likelihood that your MIL will sue, it might be worth looking into an annual policy.
Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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