The tinfoil hat part of my brain suspects that jacking insurance rates up is a good way to get people to vacate land so it can be owned by the very wealthy only. Declare the land "too dangerous" to live on, homeowners get priced out because they cant afford the insurance plus mortgage, somebody buys all the land up and magically it gets reclassified as safe. A sort of insurance-based blockbusting. This time though it's nationwide.