California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has a political and economic wildfire on his hands.

A growing number of Californians are counting on him to stop it.

He’s also playing catchup, trying to stem its damage.

Since his reelection in 2022, Lara’s progress on this challenging front has been agonizingly slow.

A growing number of insurance companies have chosen to either not renew policies of California homeowners or opted to not write new policies.

For Marin residents who have been caught up in this spiral, watching TV commercials where insurance companies promise “good hands,” “good neighbor” or similar pledges of reliability, has to be frustrating.

Even with Marin residents voting to tax themselves to bolster local wildfire protection measures and fire-safety improvements they’ve made to their own properties, insurance companies are ditching them. They claim those policies are too risky and potentially costly for their books.

Locally, insurers’ refusal to write new policies has become a hurdle for home sales because lenders won’t issue mortgages without assurance that the properties are insured.

The breadth of the problem is reflected in that two of Marin’s champions of fire safety have had to deal with nonrenewal of their coverage, regardless of the fire-protection work they have done to their properties.

Mark Brown, executive director of the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority, says the risk models used by the industry are “completely blind” to work that the agency and homeowners have done to make Marin less vulnerable to an out-of-control wildland fire.

Lara says it is a crisis.

He’s not wrong.

For too many Californians, the FAIR plan, which provides less coverage at much higher rates, is going from a last resort, to the only resort. Its financial capability to cover the risk is worrisome.

Lara admits that growth “is really what keeps me up at night.”

Even though late in coming, he’s announced a plan to streamline rate increases and base them on the growing threat of climate change, essentially calculations of future risk of disastrous fires — or “catastrophe modeling.” In exchange, insurers have agreed to renew issuing coverage.

Lara calls it a “forced marriage,” with the state making concessions in terms of controlling rates in exchange for insurers pulling out of the California market, in high-risk areas if not totally.

What’s missing is clear guidelines that take common-sense preventive measures into account.

Does this “forced marriage” really take into account what is best for “the kids?”

New rates and coverage should take into account community and individual property owners’ fire-safety measures. Blanket refusals to renew policies does little in California’s efforts to encourage property owners and communities to take action to bolster wildland fire prevention and protection.

Insurance companies’ technological models should be able to take into account such measures.

Lara has a crisis on his hands — insurance companies are leaving the state, leaving their long-term customers high and dry.

And that dilemma is affecting the real estate market and property owners’ pocketbooks.

Lara, who has two years left in his second and last term as insurance commissioner, has yet to prove he’s up for this growing challenge.

Halfway measures are not an answer.