Carmen Ruiz's hands shake slightly as she shows me the notice. It arrived three days ago at her Deerfield Beach home, tucked between a credit card offer and a grocery store flyer. Citizens Property Insurance is transferring her policy to a company called Slide Insurance. The transfer is mandatory. She has thirty days to review the new terms.
"I didn't ask to leave Citizens," she tells me across her kitchen table. The table is covered with papers—the notice, her current policy, printouts from insurance websites she's been trying to make sense of. "I chose Citizens because I knew they couldn't go bankrupt. My mother lost everything in Andrew because her insurance company went under. I specifically chose the state option."
Carmen bought this three-bedroom concrete block house in 2019, two miles from the beach. She works as a dental hygienist at a clinic in Pompano Beach, leaves every morning at 7:15 to beat the traffic on Federal Highway. Her daughter is in second grade at the elementary school six blocks away. She pays her Citizens premium every month without fail: $4,200 annually for coverage that used to cost $1,800 before Hurricane Ian.
Now the state is forcing her into the private market. And nobody can tell her if that's good news or disaster waiting to happen.
The depopulation program works like this: if a private insurer offers coverage within 20% of your Citizens premium, you're no longer eligible for Citizens coverage. The state considers this proof that the private market is recovering. Carmen's notice says Slide Insurance will match her current premium until renewal in August 2026. After that, they can charge whatever the market will bear.
"But will they actually pay if something happens?" Carmen asks. "That's what I need to know."
Nobody has an answer.
Florida insurers denied 46.7% of all homeowner claims in 2024. Citizens itself denied 50.4% of claims in 2023. But the companies taking depopulated policies? Their specific denial rates aren't public information.
The nine companies approved to absorb tens of thousands of policies in the February round—Slide Insurance, Manatee Insurance, and others—don't have publicly accessible claims payment records.
I spent two days trying to find this information. Called the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. The person who answered said they approve insurers based on financial stability and reinsurance programs. When I asked about claims payment records, she said that data isn't tracked by company in a publicly accessible way. I'd need to file a formal records request, and even then, she couldn't guarantee the information exists in the format I was asking for.
I searched regulatory filings. Nothing useful. Talked to insurance attorneys who represent homeowners in claims disputes. They knew which companies they sue most often, but that's anecdotal, not statistical. One attorney laughed when I asked if there's a database comparing claims denial rates. "If that existed," she said, "my job would be a lot easier."
Carmen called her broker the day she got the notice. The broker told her Slide is "approved by the state" and "financially stable." Carmen asked about their claims record. The broker said he didn't have that information but that being state-approved meant they met certain standards.
"What standards?" Carmen asked.
The broker wasn't sure.
Carmen's neighbor Rosa received the same notice. So did the family across the street. They've been texting each other, trying to piece together what this means. Rosa found a Reddit thread where someone said Slide took six months to pay a roof claim. Someone else said they paid in three weeks. A third person said they denied everything and you had to hire a lawyer.
"How are we supposed to know?" Carmen asks me. "The state is forcing us to switch, but they won't tell us if these companies are any good."
The state calls this market recovery. Citizens CEO Tim Cerio celebrates dropping from 1.4 million policies to about 385,000 by year's end. More than 1.3 million policies have been transferred since 2023. Private insurers are absorbing risk that used to sit with taxpayers. Governor Ron DeSantis points to litigation reforms that have reduced lawsuits by 30%.
But Citizens board member Charlie Lydecker, himself an insurance executive, told reporters what the numbers actually mean: private insurers have "cherry picked" the best policies, leaving Citizens with the homes nobody wants.
Carmen's house is exactly the kind of policy a private company will take. Concrete block construction, newer roof, two miles from the beach. Good risk. Profitable.
Which means she's valuable enough to extract from state protection and profitable enough to transfer into a private market where she can't verify whether her insurer will actually pay when she needs them to.
"My mother's insurance company had good ratings too," Carmen says. "Right up until they went bankrupt after Andrew."
Her mother lived in Homestead. Carmen was eight years old when Andrew hit, remembers the weeks they spent in a FEMA trailer while her mother fought with the insurance company. The company went under before they paid out. Her mother never rebuilt. She rents now, in Hialeah, still won't buy another house.
Carmen has until mid-December to accept the transfer or find different coverage. If she does nothing, the transfer happens automatically. If she wants to stay with Citizens, she'd have to prove that no private insurer will cover her within the 20% threshold. Given that Slide already made an offer, that's impossible.
Her renewal is in August. That's when Slide can raise her premium to whatever they want. That's when she'll find out if $4,200 was just the entry price.
And if a hurricane hits between now and then? If her roof gets torn off or her windows blow out?
That's when she'll find out if Slide Insurance actually pays claims or if she'll be fighting them while her house sits open to the weather.
In five years, Carmen might not be able to afford to live here. In ten years, she might not be able to sell this house because buyers can't get mortgages without affordable insurance. But those questions feel abstract compared to the one in front of her right now: sign the papers accepting an insurer she can't evaluate, or lose her coverage entirely.
She looks at the letter again, then at the photo of her daughter on the refrigerator. Second grade school picture, gap-toothed smile.
"I chose Citizens because I thought it was safer," Carmen says. "I thought being with the state meant something. Now I'm being told that was wrong, that the private market is better. But nobody can show me that's true."
The February depopulation round starts in six weeks. Slide Insurance is taking up to 100,000 policies. Tens of thousands more Florida homeowners will receive the same notice Carmen got. They'll call their brokers asking the same questions. They'll search online for claims records that don't exist. They'll text their neighbors trying to crowdsource information the state won't provide.
Market stabilization, the state calls it. Progress, says the industry.
Carmen calls it gambling with her daughter's home.
-
South Florida rate decreases: Most Citizens customers in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties would see rates decreased by more than 11% in 2026 due to litigation reforms having a particularly positive effect in the region.
-
Central Florida rate increases: While South Florida sees decreases, average rates are projected to increase in Orange, Osceola, Lake and Brevard counties as Citizens works to make rates "actuarially sound" in those areas.
-
Assessment risk remains: Citizens policyholders can still be required to pay an assessment of up to 45% of their insurance premium if Citizens doesn't have resources to pay claims following a major hurricane.
-
Hurricane Milton claim denials: More than 92,000 homeowners were denied claims following Hurricanes Milton and Helene, with Florida's denial rate hitting 46.7% in 2024.