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Insurance — The Data Post

The FAIR Plan Table: Berkeley’s Insurance Crisis, ZIP by ZIP

Percentages get quoted about Berkeley’s insurance crisis constantly, usually without the table underneath them. Here is the table — FAIR Plan policy counts by ZIP code, fiscal 2021 against fiscal 2025, from Megan Micco’s analysis of FAIR Plan data — with the analyst’s own caveat printed where it belongs: these are raw policy counts, not market share. Read your ZIP. Then read what it does and does not mean.

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A roofer’s gloved hand holding a clipboard and pen on a shingled roof
94708 +585Net new policies in the hills ZIP5 ZIPsCounted, FY2021 vs FY20252× statewideFAIR Plan growth per the City’s memo
Whose Count This Is

What is this table, and whose count is it?

It is a count of California FAIR Plan policies — the state’s insurer of last resort — in five Berkeley ZIP codes, comparing fiscal 2021 with fiscal 2025. The analysis is Megan Micco’s, a Berkeley realtor who works the FAIR Plan data directly.

Two framing facts before the numbers. First, the City of Berkeley’s Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, in its April 2026 memo, records that FAIR Plan enrollment has doubled statewide in two years and that the Plan now underwrites a significant share of hillside risk — the table below is what that sentence looks like at street level. Second, Micco’s own warning about her table, which we are printing in the body of this post rather than a footnote: these are raw policy counts, not market-share figures. A ZIP can post a huge percentage because it started from almost nothing. The direction is unmistakable; the precision of any single percentage is not the point.

A worked example keeps the table honest. ZIP 94707 — Thousand Oaks and Westbrae, the oak-shaded streets of Berkeley’s northwest — began the period with eighteen FAIR Plan policies, a rounding error in a neighbourhood of thousands of homes. It ended with 376. Nothing about that neighbourhood’s exposure changed twenty-fold across four quiet fire seasons; what changed was the admitted market’s willingness to write underneath its oak canopy. That is the whole lesson of the table in a single ZIP: these counts track insurers first and flames only loosely. The hills ZIP with the deepest bench, 94708, shows the same movement at a larger scale — not a spike, a migration.

The Table

How did FAIR Plan policies grow, ZIP by ZIP?

Raw FAIR Plan policy counts, fiscal 2021 → fiscal 2025:

ZIP — neighbourhoodsFY2021 policiesFY2025 policies
94707 — Thousand Oaks / Westbrae18376
94705 — Claremont / Elmwood69451
94708 — Cragmont / La Loma / hills106691
94709 — Northside / Gourmet Ghetto1486
94710 — West Berkeley flats2541

Source: Megan Micco’s analysis of California FAIR Plan policy data. Net change for 94708 is simple subtraction of the published counts: 691 minus 106 is 585 additional policies.

94707 Thousand Oaks/Westbrae+1,989%94705 Claremont/Elmwood+554%94708 Cragmont/La Loma/hills+552%94709 Northside/Gourmet Ghetto+514%94710 West Berkeley flats+64%
Growth in FAIR Plan policy counts by Berkeley ZIP, FY2021 to FY2025 — raw counts, not market share (Megan Micco’s analysis of FAIR Plan data). One ZIP started from 18 policies; read the table above alongside the percentages.
What It Means

What does your ZIP’s number mean for your roof?

The geography is the message. The four hills-and-hills-adjacent ZIPs grew between five- and twenty-fold in four years; the flatland ZIP grew by two-thirds. The admitted market did not leave Berkeley — it left Berkeley’s slopes, which is exactly the pattern the City’s memo describes and exactly why the roof over a hills house is now underwritten like a wildfire document rather than a building part.

Two consequences land on the roof specifically. Price: the FAIR Plan’s approved average rate increase of 29.1% took effect October 15, 2026 (KQED, reported in the Lederer Team’s guide), so standing still on the Plan gets more expensive every year. And mobility: getting back into the admitted market runs through documentation — the Class A assembly, the cleared five feet, the dated photographs — because the FAIR Plan covers fire only, to a residential limit of $3 million, and households commonly wrap it with a Difference-in-Conditions policy for everything else (Lederer guide). A wrapped, documented house is a quotable house.

If this table is your street’s story, the practical sequence is in the 75-day workplan — and the work itself is our insurance documentation service, built to produce the file a broker can take back to the admitted market.

Questions, Answered

FAIR Plan Questions Berkeley Homeowners Ask Us

01 Does a big growth number mean my street is likely to burn?

No — and the distinction matters. These counts measure insurance behaviour: how many households ended up on the insurer of last resort after the admitted market declined them. That tracks underwriting maps and corporate retreat decisions at least as much as it tracks any single street’s fire physics. The fire hazard itself is described by the CAL FIRE severity-zone mapping and the City’s fire zones. Confusing the two tables — the risk map and the retreat count — produces bad decisions in both directions.

02 Why did the flats barely move while the hills exploded?

Because the admitted market’s objection was never Berkeley; it was slope, vegetation, and ember exposure. ZIP 94710 — the West Berkeley flats — sits outside the severity-zone mapping that drives wildfire scoring, so its FAIR Plan count crept from 25 to 41 while 94708 added 585 policies. Same city, same fire department, different underwriting universe. It is also why flatland owners should not borrow the hills’ paperwork burden — your roof is read as a rain document, not a fire one.

03 Can a documented roof actually get me off the FAIR Plan?

It is the mechanism the system itself points to. Under the state’s Safer from Wildfires rule (10 CCR §2644.9), wildfire-rating insurers must credit listed mitigation measures — the Class A roof is the first structure measure — disclose your risk score, and hear appeals. Brokers shop files, not houses; a file with dated photographs, assembly evidence, and the mitigation checklist completed is the version of your house an admitted underwriter can say yes to. No roofer can promise the outcome, and we do not. We can promise the file will be complete.

Keep Reading

Keep reading, and the service behind this guide

Ready When You Are

Your ZIP is in this table. Your roof file should be ahead of it.

Whether you are on the FAIR Plan now or watching your neighbours land there, the exit runs through documentation. Call us, and we will inspect the roof, photograph it properly, and tell you plainly which side of the admitted market’s line your house currently sits on.

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