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Lawmakers promised to revamp Citizens Property Insurance Corp., and it looks as if they could make good on that promise this year. Citizens, Florida’s insurer of last resort, is currently allowed to recover a deficit by assessing policyholders — Florida residents — up to 15 percent of premium for each fund that falls behind. If the personal lines account, the commercial lines account and the coastal account all had a deficit, a Floridian could see an assessment of 45 percent of his or her premium.

Florida homeowners have started to dread receiving their homeowners’ insurance bill. One homeowner in Florida was shocked to see that his homeowners’ insurance company increased his total replacement cost value of his home by $57,000 in one year. The homeowners’ insurance value is almost double what it would take to rebuild this two-bedroom, 950 square foot house.

Condo owners in Miami-Dade County may see an increase in their condo association fees coming soon. State-run insurance company Citizens Property Insurance Corp. said they will start raising insurance rates for many high-rise condominiums in South Florida by roughly 21 percent, as reported by the Sun Sentinel.

Florida’s insurance market has long been a lively topic of discussion among legislators and policymakers. Citizens Property Insurance Corp. has struggled to stay viable and to revert to its intended role as property insurer of last resort. At the same time, Congress has been casting about, trying to figure out what to do about the National Flood Insurance Program.

President Obama reauthorized the National Flood Insurance Program in January, for what seems to be the hundredth time in recent years. In Congress, a long-term NFIP reauthorization bill passed by the House last summer languishes in the Senate, in spite of the efforts of a bipartisan group of senators. The 41 lawmakers recently sent a letter to Senate leadership urging them to make the insurance program a priority.

We are wrapping up our discussion of homeowners insurance and lenders’ foreclosure practices. Homeowners in Florida have fallen victim to questionable foreclosure practices, and the media has covered those at length. What distressed homeowners may not realize is that their lenders may also have foisted a homeowners insurance policy on them that was a little questionable, too.

We are talking about the foreclosure crisis and homeowners insurance. Florida has felt the pain of both, but some homeowners may have felt the pain of the two in combination. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo are now the targets of an investigation into force-placed homeowners insurance policies.

The foreclosure crisis hit Florida pretty hard, and the state has seen its fair share of news stories about banks’ sloppy documentation practices and robo-signing scandals. Regulators, consumer advocates and consumers themselves have taken mortgage companies to task for predatory lending, too. One state is pursuing banks for yet another questionable practice, this one involving homeowners insurance.

We are picking up the discussion from our Dec. 4, 2011 post. We were looking at a study of insurance policy language that is scheduled to be published this month. The author, a law school professor, compared homeowners insurance policies, focusing on policies at the top 10 insurance groups in six states. He found that changes from the standard forms are “systematically less generous” to consumers.

We have been talking about the proposals that officials of Citizens Property Insurance Corp. presented to a panel of lawmakers at the specific request of Florida Gov. Rick Scott. The insurance company has been under fire for some time, with the governor and others sounding the alarm about the company’s financial stability and its rate of growth. Citizens was designed to be the insurer of last resort in the state, but it now boasts 1.5 million policyholders and $500 billion or more in exposure.