No, you idiots, insurance will not even begin to cover the short- and long-term damage inflicted by riots in Portland, Kenosha, Chicago, and elsewhere.
In fact, as business owners whose shops were destroyed or badly damaged during the Minneapolis riots are finding out, the cost of recovery is far greater than their insurance payouts.
“Dozens of owners whose Twin Cities properties were severely damaged in the May riots have been stunned to discover that the money they would collect from their insurance company for demolition won’t come close to the actual costs of doing the job,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
It turns out that several business owners, including many immigrant entrepreneurs, are struggling to find ways to recover.
“One day after rioters destroyed the Sports Dome retail complex in St. Paul, a construction crew hired by the city knocked the building down because it was dangerously unstable,” the newspaper reports. “Then the city presented the property owners with a $140,000 bill for what it would cost to haul away the debris.”
It adds, “Like dozens of other investors whose properties were severely damaged in the May riots, the Kim family was stunned to discover that the money it would collect from its insurance company for demolition won’t come close to the actual costs of doing the job. Most policies limit reimbursement to $25,000 to $50,000, but contractors have been submitting bids of $200,000 to $300,000. In many cases, the price of the work is not much lower than the actual value of the property, records show.”
Contractors told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that prices for riot-related projects are indeed higher than usual. However, those contractors said, that is because government ordinances mandate that they treat debris from burned-out buildings as “hazardous,” which can then as much as double the cost for the job.
Consider also the following passage from the same report:
“I think all of these people are trying to take advantage of immigrant people,” he says.
Islam decided to move forward on a $125,000 bid; insurance will cover just $50,000 of those costs.
“Our neighborhood looks like a war zone,” Islam said. “As a property owner, it is my moral responsibility to somehow get it done.”
The move will leave him with almost no money for rebuilding. Most of the money he got from his policy went to pay off his mortgage.
This is just one aspect of one recovery effort in one city.
This is to say nothing of the long-term damage that the riots in Seattle, Chicago, Cleveland, and elsewhere will have on those areas, where investors and consumers will be far less likely now to pour in cash. This is to say nothing of crippling cash-flow disruption for businesses that were struggling already amid the coronavirus pandemic. This is to say nothing of the permanent loss of jobs or the spike in insurance rates that business owners will face now because of the riots. This is also to say nothing of the fact that, for some, it took years, and even generations, to build up businesses that quite literally went up in flames overnight.
Someone ought to run this Minneapolis Star Tribune report by the idiots who have defended and even promoted the anti-police looting and rioting with the astonishingly ignorant assertion that insurance will somehow cover the cost of the damage, both physical and emotional.
Black Lives Matter Chicago organizer Ariel Atkins, for example, called the ransacking of department stores in Chicago “reparations,” adding also that “anything” that the looters stole “they can take it because these businesses have insurance.” USA Today contributor Sally Kohn said she “understands” the violence and that America needs to “check [its] priorities” because “property is insured and can be replaced.” Activist and former CNN reporter Wendy Brandes said that people need to “stop mourning broken windows at Starbucks, Walmart, and Chase banks” because “those multi-billion-dollar companies [are] going to be just fine.” Author John Pavlovitz said, “White people are still going on about the property damage done in the George Floyd protests. The windows and signs have already long been replaced or soon will be. George Floyd cannot. That’s the damn point. People > Property.”
It takes a toxic cocktail of ignorance and privilege to look at the smoldering ruins of a family-owned business and shrug it off with some quip about how an insurance company will no doubt fix it. Perhaps this ignorant talking point about insurance is really about assuaging the guilt of those who have targeted innocent entrepreneurs. Perhaps it is meant to assuage the guilt of the rioters’ enablers.
In the end, though, it does not change the fact that innocent people, including many immigrant people of color, are suffering in the name of “justice,” which, ironically enough, is the exact opposite of justice.
