> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.mendolocal.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # FAIR Plan Premiums Rise Across Mendocino County, Especially on the Coast - URL: https://www.mendolocal.news/fair-plan-premiums-rise-across-mendocino-county-especially-on-the-coast/ - Published: 2026-10-30T15:52:41.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-30T16:21:37.000Z - Description: The California FAIR Plan is raising fire insurance premiums in Mendocino — about 22% countywide and 25% on the coast. Homeowners who cleared brush and trimmed limbs still saw their bills climb. - Author: Elise Cox - Tags: Mendocino County, Mendocino Coast, News, Mendo Local enterprise, #large-feature The California FAIR Plan, the insurer of last resort for a growing number of Mendocino County homeowners, is raising fire insurance premiums countywide this fall — and the increases fall hardest on the coast. For policies renewing on or after Oct. 15, the plan's approved rate filing projects increases averaging about 22 percent across the county's roughly 4,100 policies, and about 25 percent across its ten coastal ZIP codes, with the steepest in Manchester (40 percent), Mendocino (39.7 percent), Point Arena (36.4 percent) and Caspar (34.8 percent). Two people who shared their experience with *MendoLocal.News* in late October reported even larger jumps — one whose premium rose from about $2,400 to $3,600, roughly 50 percent, after she had cleared brush, removed an old shed and trimmed limbs to meet the plan's requirements, and another, who manages shared expenses for a family-owned property, whose annual cost rose from $3,059 to $4,388, about 43 percent. The increases stem from a rate filing the California Department of Insurance approved April 6\. The FAIR Plan had asked for a 35.6 percent average statewide increase; the department approved 29.1 percent. The plan attributes the increase to rising wildfire catastrophe risk, increasing numbers of homeowners on the plan, and the cost of the reinsurance it buys to cover a catastrophic fire. By its own figures, the number of homes it insures grew about 53 percent in the year ending March 31, 2025 — from about 362,000 to about 554,000 policies — and their total insured value grew 75 percent, to about $558 billion. Statewide, the premiums charged by the plan rose from about $333 million in the year ending March 2021 to more than $1.5 billion in the year ending March 2025\. To set its rates, the plan relies on a wildfire catastrophe model that projects its expected annual fire losses at roughly six times its projected ordinary, non-catastrophe claims, meant to capture long-term risk rather than any single year's experience. While FAIR increases in inland Mendocino County are smaller, premiums there are higher on average. Ukiah, Willits, Redwood Valley and the inland valleys hold about 2,900 of the county's policies and will pay about $4,490 a year per policy on average under the new rates, versus about $3,970 on the coast. Ukiah is up 24.7 percent, Willits 23.7 percent, Redwood Valley 22.3 percent; Hopland, at 2.9 percent, was the lowest among inland ZIP codes with more than 50 policies. Individual bills can differ dramatically from these ZIP-code averages. The filing's figures are ZIP-wide projections, but the plan prices each property on its own wildfire-risk score, and the approved filing raises its wind, hail and vandalism coverage by about 227 percent, far faster than its basic fire rates, which rise about 25 percent. That coverage is optional, but nearly all policyholders carry it, by the filing's counts. In ZIP 95460, which covers Mendocino, the average increase is about $1,100 a policy, but the largest single-policy increase in that ZIP code is more than $5,500. According to the filing, the largest single-policy increase in the county is in Philo, $6,780, followed by Elk, $6,660, and Albion, $5,919. Policies the plan scores as lower wildfire risk pay less for wildfire coverage, so for most of them more of the premium comes from the optional coverages — windstorm, hail, explosion and vandalism — which, the plan told regulators in February, when it was seeking a larger increase, makes them more likely to see increases above 100 percent. On top of that, the plan raises insured values several percent a year through a separate inflation-guard adjustment. Homeowners may also buy additional coverage the FAIR Plan does not sell — such as theft, liability or water damage — from another insurer, which adds to their total insurance costs. FAIR Plan premium increases by Mendocino County ZIP code Projected increases for policies renewing on or after Oct. 15, 2026, based on dwelling-fire policies in force as of March 31, 2025. | ZIP | Community | Policies | Avg. premium now | Avg. premium projected | Increase | Avg. $ increase | Largest single increase | | -------------------- | -------------- | -------- | ---------------- | ---------------------- | -------- | --------------- | ----------------------- | | Coastal ZIP codes | | | | | | | | | 95459 | Manchester | 56 | $4,332 | $6,066 | 40.0% | $1,734 | $3,587 | | 95460 | Mendocino | 140 | $2,797 | $3,908 | 39.7% | $1,112 | $5,567 | | 95468 | Point Arena | 45 | $3,832 | $5,225 | 36.4% | $1,393 | $2,973 | | 95420 | Caspar | 31 | $3,455 | $4,659 | 34.8% | $1,204 | $5,024 | | 95437 | Fort Bragg | 361 | $1,927 | $2,535 | 31.6% | $609 | $3,804 | | 95445 | Gualala | 330 | $3,475 | $4,424 | 27.3% | $950 | $5,768 | | 95432 | Elk | 24 | $7,755 | $9,420 | 21.5% | $1,665 | $6,660 | | 95488 | Westport | 18 | $4,157 | $4,952 | 19.1% | $795 | $2,837 | | 95456 | Little River | 144 | $3,907 | $4,140 | 6.0% | $233 | $4,723 | | 95410 | Albion | 75 | $4,133 | $4,091 | −1.0% | −$43 | $5,919 | | Coast total | 1,224 | $3,178 | $3,971 | 25.0% | $793 | $6,660 | | | Inland ZIP codes | | | | | | | | | 95481 | Talmage | 6 | $1,397 | $1,875 | 34.2% | $478 | $2,022 | | 95463 | Navarro | 20 | $4,616 | $5,842 | 26.5% | $1,225 | $3,613 | | 95415 | Boonville | 84 | $5,409 | $6,748 | 24.8% | $1,339 | $4,533 | | 95482 | Ukiah | 993 | $3,055 | $3,811 | 24.7% | $755 | $5,173 | | 95469 | Potter Valley | 151 | $5,178 | $6,431 | 24.2% | $1,253 | $4,958 | | 95490 | Willits | 909 | $3,118 | $3,858 | 23.7% | $740 | $3,555 | | 95470 | Redwood Valley | 249 | $4,142 | $5,063 | 22.3% | $922 | $4,640 | | 95585 | Leggett | 17 | $3,272 | $3,912 | 19.6% | $641 | $1,776 | | 95427 | Comptche | 23 | $6,068 | $7,162 | 18.0% | $1,094 | $5,291 | | 95466 | Philo | 88 | $6,489 | $7,526 | 16.0% | $1,037 | $6,780 | | 95587 | Piercy | 15 | $4,387 | $5,061 | 15.4% | $674 | $1,955 | | 95428 | Covelo | 46 | $4,891 | $5,585 | 14.2% | $694 | $2,655 | | 95494 | Yorkville | 46 | $5,153 | $5,772 | 12.0% | $619 | $2,695 | | 95454 | Laytonville | 144 | $4,061 | $4,519 | 11.3% | $458 | $5,277 | | 95429 | Dos Rios | 23 | $5,786 | $6,303 | 8.9% | $516 | $1,803 | | 95449 | Hopland | 64 | $6,278 | $6,460 | 2.9% | $183 | $3,553 | | 95417 | Branscomb | 10 | $6,475 | $5,416 | −16.3% | −$1,058 | $665 | | Inland total | 2,888 | $3,710 | $4,492 | 21.1% | $782 | $6,780 | | | All Mendocino County | 4,112 | $3,552 | $4,337 | 22.1% | $785 | $6,780 | | Coastal ZIP codes: Westport, Fort Bragg, Caspar, Mendocino, Little River, Albion, Elk, Manchester, Point Arena and Gualala (which straddles the Sonoma County line). Figures are the plan’s own projections, not actual renewal bills; small ZIP codes can swing on a few policies. “Avg. $ increase” is per policy; “largest single increase” is the biggest one-policy jump in each ZIP code. Source: California FAIR Plan rate filing 25-2174 (Exhibit 20), approved by the California Department of Insurance. Analysis by MendoLocal.News. Against the rest of the state, Mendocino's countywide average increase is comparatively modest — but that average describes the county as a whole, not what individual homeowners are seeing on their renewal notices, some of which are climbing far more steeply. The statewide average FAIR dwelling-fire policy rises from about $2,870 to $3,700 a year under the filing, and the counties with the largest average increases are in Southern California and along the central and southern coast. Ventura is seeing the highest average increase at 43 percent, San Bernardino at nearly 40 percent, Santa Barbara at 39 percent, and Los Angeles, which alone holds about 135,000 FAIR policies, at 32 percent. But those countywide averages conceal wide variation from ZIP to ZIP and home to home. Six counties, four of them in the Central Valley, saw their average rates fall; San Francisco's dropped 20 percent. The steepest increases in Mendocino are landing on a stretch of coast that has seen little major wildfire in recent memory — Manchester, Mendocino, Point Arena, and Caspar. No fire of 1,000 acres or more is on record within five miles of Mendocino or Caspar; the last within five miles of Manchester was a 4,466-acre lightning fire in 2008, and Point Arena's was in 1945\. In a second article on FAIR Plan increases, *MendoLocal.News* will examine why the county's rates are rising fastest where wildfire has been rare, and how the coast's premiums compare, as a share of each home's value, with the fire-prone communities of Southern California. --- #### **How We Reported This Story** The numbers here come from the FAIR Plan’s rate filing and public data, plus our calculations. Here is what we used, and how. - **The rate filing.** California Department of Insurance file 25-2174 (SERFF tracking number MOCC-134657692) is the FAIR Plan’s dwelling-fire rate application, approved in April 2026\. The 2,619-page filing is public through the department’s online rate-filing search. We downloaded it Oct. 24, 2026. - **ZIP-code projections.** The filing’s “Exhibit 20” lists, for each ZIP code, the plan’s policies in force on March 31, 2025, their premiums at current rates, and what the plan projects they would pay under the approved rates. The filing contains several versions; we used the one that matches the approved increase (29.0 percent in its totals, against the approved 29.1 percent). It lists 27 Mendocino County ZIP codes with 4,112 policies, whose premiums would rise from about $14.6 million to $17.8 million. The table also gives the largest projected dollar increase for any single policy in each ZIP code; those are the figures we cite for ZIP 95460, Philo, Elk and Albion. - **Our averages.** The county, coastal and inland increases — about 22, 25 and 21 percent — are our calculations, not the plan’s. For each group we added up the projected premiums and divided by the total current premiums, so ZIP codes with more policies count for more. The per-policy figures ($4,490 inland, $3,970 on the coast) are total projected premiums divided by policy counts. We defined the coast as ten ZIP codes: Westport, Fort Bragg, Caspar, Mendocino, Little River, Albion, Elk, Manchester, Point Arena and Gualala, which straddles the Sonoma County line. Inland is the county’s other 17 ZIP codes. The policy counts are from March 2025; the plan’s public data show it has added policies since. - **Small ZIP codes.** Several coastal ZIP codes have few policies — Manchester 56, Point Arena 45, Caspar 31 — so their percentages can swing with a handful of policies. - **Statewide and county comparisons.** The filing lists ZIP codes, not counties. We assigned each ZIP code to a county using a public ZIP-code database (GeoNames); it could not place 44 ZIP codes holding 54 policies, which we left out of the county comparisons. Statewide, the filing’s table totals 553,520 policies. Counties with few policies, such as Kings (135) and Sutter (75), produce less stable averages. - **The plan’s explanations and growth.** The reasons the plan gives for the increase come from the filing’s explanatory memorandum and from a statement the plan gave The Mendocino Voice, which published it Oct. 23\. The growth in its policies (from 362,031 to 553,520) and in insured value (from $319.5 billion to $557.7 billion) in the year ending March 31, 2025, is from the memorandum. The premium figures — about $333 million in the year ending March 2021 and $1.54 billion in the year ending March 2025 — are the plan’s California fire-line written premium from the filing’s ratemaking data. The “six times” comparison is the filing’s catastrophe adjustment factor of 5.97, which compares the model’s expected catastrophe-plus-ordinary fire losses with the plan’s projected ordinary, non-catastrophe claims (its own claims for the five years ending March 2021–2025, excluding major fire events, adjusted for open claims and inflation). - **Property-by-property pricing.** The plan’s rating rules in the filing assign each property a wildfire “territory” based on two scores from the company ZestyAI, and the wildfire part of the premium rises with that territory. The rules list the optional coverages as extended coverage (windstorm or hail, explosion, riot or civil commotion, aircraft or vehicles, volcanic eruption) and vandalism or malicious mischief. The increases for those optional coverages (about 227 percent) and for basic fire coverage (about 25 percent) are from the approved rate application. The explanation of why some policies face increases above 100 percent is from the plan’s February 2026 response to a department objection, given when it was seeking a larger increase. That nearly all policyholders carry the optional coverages is from the filing’s exposure counts: allied-lines exposures were about 95 percent of fire exposures in the year ending March 2025 (about 93 percent a year earlier). - **Coverage the plan doesn’t sell.** That theft, liability and water damage are not covered by the FAIR Plan, and that homeowners buy them from other insurers through “difference in conditions” policies, is from the plan’s website and the Department of Insurance’s FAIR Plan page. - **Fire history.** The coastal fire history comes from CAL FIRE’s historical fire-perimeter records. We counted every recorded fire whose perimeter came within five miles of each town’s center. CAL FIRE says its records are incomplete, especially for older and smaller fires. - **Homeowners.** The two people’s figures are their own accounts, from responses to our Oct. 23 call on a local email list. - **What the figures are not.** They are projections of what the plan’s filing says it will charge for the policies it had in March 2025, not actual renewal bills. A bill also depends on a property’s own wildfire score, which optional coverages it carries, and annual adjustments to insured value. - **Comment.** We asked the FAIR Plan and the California Department of Insurance for comment on Oct. 26, and followed up with the FAIR Plan on Oct. 29\. Neither responded within five days. - **The data.** The ZIP-code table behind the Mendocino County figures — policies, current and projected premiums, and increases for all 27 ZIP codes — is included above. Questions or corrections: [editor@mendolocal.news](mailto:editor@mendolocal.news)