Category: Risk Management

Hoarding Behaviors Cause Landlords Big Problems

Hoarding behaviors are on the rise. Take proactive steps to address problems head-on before they escalate to save you repair costs and potential liability.

Today animal and other hoarding cases are mainstream news and the stuff of television reality shows. Early in my career, I worked for a group of self-insured cities and experienced my first case of animal hoarding, if you consider a rat an animal.

In a small Bay Area apartment complex, fellow tenants walked by an apartment unit and noticed a rat sunning itself once in a while on the windowsill. No biggie, they thought. “Live and let live” is a Bay Area core value. Eventually as they passed, however, they noticed the curtains were chewed at the bottom. Still not a big deal. Until one morning, lots of rats were hanging out on the sill and the neighbors decided to peek under the ever-shortening curtain hem. What they saw freaked them out. There were many, many rats, hundreds in fact, scampering about or chillin’ on the furniture, maybe even watching Animal Planet. Neighbors called the management company which turned to the city for help. As the city’s claims representative, I arrived right after a Hazmat team.

Sure, it started out innocently enough – two rats that bred. Then those rats bred. Then the tenants turned their bedroom into the “rat room” and moved into the living room. Soon, rats were everywhere, hundreds when I arrived, as city workers in respirators caged and counted.

“Domestic squalor” is a term used by professionals to define people who slowly destroy their own living quarters. Those who stockpile may experience extreme loneliness after the death of a partner or may have a mental disorder. However, despite the reasons one begins to hoard, landlords must proactively manage these issues to reduce liability. After all, others have to live near these blighted properties.

If you own a rental unit, you probably have a hoarding story or two of your own. Tenants who store papers, hoard animals or even cook meth may be in your story repertoire. Managing the general factors that encourage or discourage these types of problems and others in housing risks can help you to avoid contending with a big, big mess. Those factors are environmental, biological and equipment-related.

Environmental factors include crowded hallways, inadequate lighting which encourages acts like using dark areas as toilets, overgrown landscaping and floors in poor condition.  

Biological factors include not treating vermin infestations, such as roof rats we harbor in inner city Phoenix. These pesky creatures destroy wiring and bring a host of other problems, including mites, rat waste and odor. Bedbugs, too, have become a national problem.

Equipment factors like leaking boilers and other poorly maintained equipment are frequently the root cause of other injuries and incidents like mold.

Only by frequent condition assessments of your tenant-occupied properties can you hope to discourage hoarding and other problems. Here are some tips to help you reduce the exposure to hoarding losses.

  • Try to develop relationships with repair people. Use them to report on the general condition of that property when making repairs, for example a plumber who replaces a leaking faucet or a heating specialist who repairs the heater. They can tip you off to any problems.
  • Put language in your lease agreements allowing monthly property inspection. Use monthly maintenance calls to replace heater filters as the time to eyeball the property condition. This monthly visit helps you both ensure your equipment is well maintained and that hoarding or filthy conditions are nipped in the bud.
  • Hoarding is a difficult situation. Do not let situation get out of hand. If you never faced this problem as a landlord, visit this URL to see what can happen when hoarding runs wild. Your city or county health department may offer guidance, as the city I represented did in the rat affair. Local social service organizations can often assist with the human element, which may be the hardest piece to manage.
  • If you do run across a case of domestic squalor, you may need to marshal outside resources before safely deploying workers. Many companies now specialize in cleaning up after hoarders. Beware, though, coverage for hoarding-related losses may be dicey under your insurance policy.

Landlording is never simple, but with many living alone without family support, hoarding behaviors are on the rise. Take proactive steps to address problems head-on before they escalate to save you repair costs and potential liability.

Why Consultancies Need Insurance Coverage

Consultants by choice or by chance need strong insurance advice before hanging their shingle.

While this was written a few years ago, my advice is timely and bears repeating. More professionals are launching their own consultancies. Now more than ever with cyber-liability and intellectual property claims escalating, consultants need a highly experienced agent and solid insurance coverage advice.

Here is the link to the column that may help you.

Beware of Pumping and Pedaling

There are many things people do wrong when driving. How can you stress the importance of safe driving to your employees? Here are a few tips.

While trying to mind my own business as I was getting my nails done this week, three young gals who had just had babies came in for a pedicure and sat right behind me. They talked for about twenty minutes about breast milk pumping. One complained about finding the time to pump. “How long is your commute?” one asks the time-strapped mother. “15 minutes,” she answers. “Oh, that’s not long enough to pump,” the advisor said.

“I want to read that police report,” I said to the gal doing my nails. A woman sitting a few chairs away said to me, “Oh, they do it all the time,” meaning the young women who breastfeed, I guess.

Something Tells Me It’s All Happening At the Zoo

Then the gal with time constraints said, “Well, we’re going to the zoo tomorrow, so I can do it then.” I couldn’t resist, at that point, not knowing if she meant she would pump while she walked among the giraffes or on the trip there, so I said, “Well, at least you’ll be among mammals.” They didn’t find that amusing.

I posted this conversation on my Facebook page because I found it so amusing and completely bewildering. The comments I received made me realize: pumping and pedaling is not an anomaly. One gal told me her friend’s daughter told her teacher she wanted to be when she grew up, “Just like my mom. She can breastfeed the baby, eat a hamburger, and drive with her knee, all at the same time.”

What Else Goes Wrong Behind the Wheel?

So if your employees are pedaling and pumping, I wondered what else they might be doing behind the wheel that might impact the small business owner. Since I’ve been out of front-line claims handling for a number of years, I decided to ask some of my friends who handle claims. Here are some things they find in police reports as they investigate claims.

  1. In a long-haul trucking accident that involved fatalities, the truck driver was reviewing pornography as he drove. He drove over the top of another vehicle, resulting in several fatalities.
  2. Shaving and driving are frequently reported.
  3. One adjuster reported his insured activated cruise control in a recreational vehicle then headed for a nap.
  4. Reading at stop signs is a frequent problem in accidents.
  5. Eating behind the wheel also contributes to many accidents.

How to Avoid Pumping and Pedaling and Other Unsafe Driving Habits

There are many things people do wrong when driving. How can you stress the importance of safe driving to your employees? Here are a few tips.

  1. Set the expectation at employee orientation that safe driving, whether at home or at work, is critical to job performance. How employees drive in their own vehicles is a direct indicator of how they will drive yours.
  2. Put safe driving reminders in pay stubs from time to time.
  3. Have employees sign a form when they use a pool car that clearly states they will wear their seat belts and obey all rules of the road.
  4. Let all employees know how much accidents cost your company. While you don’t have to identify the employee who had the accident, in your next meeting, for example, tell employees, “The accident where we rear-ended another vehicle cost over $120,000 to settle.” Employees understand money.
  5. Hold employees accountable for at-fault accidents. Make it clear in your personnel policies that any failure to work safely, including driving safely, can mean discipline up to and including termination.

Know Your Employees’ Driving Habits

From time to time, ride with your employees. Do they tailgate? Do they chat more than they drive? If so, a company-wide driver training may be in order. National Safety Council offers driver training in most states. One auto accident can devastate your loss history, so money spent to prevent auto and other accidents almost always pays for itself.

In the case of breast-pumping and driving, I cannot even fathom how to avoid this exposure. Perhaps your female managers who have had children can take your lactating Madonnas aside and offer some advice. Good luck with that.

Cavalcade of Risk #144 is a Turkey!

Nancy Germond hosts the 144th Cavalcade of Risk, and it’s no turkey!

 

Since this is the closest the Cavalcade of Risk will come to Thanksgiving this year, what better topic than “turkey” risk problems? While not all blog entries conform to this juicy topic, here are a few that do. In that tone, let’s begin with my Allbusiness blog post, “Consider the Total Cost of Jerks to Your Organization.” In it I discuss how much one human turkey in the workplace can actually cost your organization.

In “The Truth is Stranger than Fiction” category, Jon Coppelman of Workers’ Comp Insider, presents “Turkey Shoot.” This post discusses a case of an insurance investigator shot by the claimant he was investigating, allegedly after being mistaken for a turkey. The truth is often stranger than fiction, isn’t it?

Next, we move to another big turkey that is making the excess market sit up and notice just a bit on the topic of climate change. Have you ever asked yourself if Mother Nature could disrupt your business? This is an old tale for many companies who make their homes in states that regularly experience extreme weather—but what about the rest of us? Read “GRC Preparedness in a Changing Climate” on the Risk Management Monitor written by Alex Bender here.

We move on to some of the biggest turkeys of them all: mortgage makers. At Insurance Bad Faith Claims Bad Faith Law Blog, Dennis Wall updates “Good Faith: Homeowners Betrayed, Banks Unreal: California Investigates, Refuses Pre-Immunity.” His posting presents a reality-based review of why there should be a settlement in the talks between State Attorneys General and financial institutions which are, at one and the same time, Mortgage Loan servicers and originators. This settlement would include all claims based on anything other than the original conditions of the talks. What reasons do the Attorneys General have for even considering a Release of All Claims including claims not yet made and that they have not yet investigated? Read more to learn how Dennis Wall really feels.

As the Supreme Court announces its intent to ponder the national health care debate and those fortunate enough to have group health ponder high-deductible savings accounts and what that means to their budget, Louise Norris presents an interesting look at opting out of group health for individual coverage. Be sure to read her entry, “More Flexibility With An Individual Health Insurance Plan,” posted at Colorado Health Insurance Insider.

In our next post on Disease Management Care, Dr. Jaan Sidorov examines Medicare’s efforts at reducing costly readmissions. It turns out that it’s not only difficult to identify those patients who are likely to be readmitted, but the math necessary to compare readmission rates across hospitals is in its infancy. Dr. Sidorov argues in “Medicare Hospital Re-Admissions: Bad,” that while Medicare’s program is well meaning, this is another example of policy running out ahead of reality.

Medicare will start paying hospitals more which receive high marks for patient satisfaction. What steps are hospitals taking to avert the risk that they receive low scores? The Healthcare Economist weighs in with “Medicare to Hospitals: The Patient is Always Right.”

And as long as we’re talking about healthcare, Hank Stern asks the timely question: “Have you considered the risk of disability and how it might affect your ability to earn a living?” InsureBlog has some thoughts on how to manage that risk. As someone who became quite ill without disability coverage, I can tell you this is a question we should all consider. Read “Are You Protected” and take heed.

That is all the entries we have this time. Have a safe and secure Thanksgiving.