Scott Bramwell stood in the frigid air of a December evening, watching his Ferry Street apartment burn like the bowels of the hottest hell. As the fire department swarmed around him, attempting to put out the blaze, Bramwell stood in a trance, realizing his home and all of his possessions were gone, never to be recovered or replaced. Fortunately for Bramwell, he had one saving grace: renter’s insurance covering the damages and liability of his now destroyed home.
The insurance, readily available to students any time and also easily cancellable, only costs between $10 and $20 a month.
Allison Liang, a peer mentor for the It Make$ Cents organization on campus, said, “People don’t know how much their belongings are worth. If one adds up all their furniture, toiletries, clothing, electronics, etc. the amount to replace all of it adds up.”
Bramwell also noted that if the student is considered liable for the fire, or in other words is found to have caused the fire, that student may be forced to pay back every penny.
“If you are declared negligent in a larger complex and it burns down, not only are you liable for the entire building itself but you can be sued for a multi-million dollar settlement by the building owner,” she said.
“I may have lost nearly everything I owned that December day, but I was able to recover because of a small investment in renter’s insurance I decided to make 20 months ago,” said Bramwell.
Although organizations like the Red Cross helped Bramwell in his time of need, offering a hotel room for the night of the fire, Bramwell said that without his insurance, he “would have [gotten anything] back other than what [he] personally could have taken out of the apartment and cleaned. [He] would have had no financial assistance other than $250 the Red Cross had given him.”
But renter’s insurance protects against more than just fires and extreme cases. Liang, explained that renter’s insurance also protects students from theft, meaning if a laptop were to be stolen, the student would be covered. The insurance also protects students from other people trying to sue if they happen to slip on the sidewalk in front of the student’s house or apartment.
Liang justified her purchase of insurance to not only protect herself but by saying, “If I can afford to eat out once a month, I can afford renter’s insurance.”
Overall, Bramwell remains thankful and grateful for all of the people and organizations that helped him out on the cold December night.
After recalling the events of that night, Bramwell remembered feeling “[shocked] to think that I was completely clueless about how horribly I was putting myself and my future at risk for not having any insurance.”