Describing the use of age and value guidelines to the Market Conditions Working Group of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Ms. Chamberlin said, "Risk is not the determining factor. There is no actuarial justification, and that's the critical element in all this."

Discussing limitation or refusal of coverage based on the age and value of the home, Ms. Chamberlin said, some insurers would say, "We won't write coverage for houses more than 30 years old or houses whose values are less than $75,000."

"There are many variations on that," she said. "Some companies might make the owner jump through a whole lot of hoops, which works definitely as a discouraging factor."

When she looked into how such restrictions impacted different neighborhoods, using the National Census data from 1990, she noted that there were far more homes in minority areas that had been excluded with such underwriting guidelines than there were in white-majority neighborhoods.

She cited specific case comparisons from different regions of the country. In one instance, in Toledo, Ohio, when a 30-year age restriction guideline was used, 93 percent of the homes in the minority neighborhoods were excluded, while 59 percent of the homes were excluded from white-majority neighborhoods.

In another comparison, the same structural age restriction excluded 67 percent of the houses in the minority neighborhoods in Central Virginia, while only 30 percent of the homes in the region's white-majority neighborhoods were excluded.

In Washington, D.C., she said, 61 percent of the homes in the minority areas were excluded under the same age guideline, while only 33 percent of the homes in D.C.'s white-majority areas were excluded.

The guideline excluding houses with values less than $75,000, she said, also showed similar results across the country.

In Richmond, Va., the value restriction excluded 89 percent of the homes in the minority areas, while 32 percent of the homes in the white-majority areas were excluded. In Philadelphia, 86 percent of the homes in the minority neighborhoods were excluded with this guideline, while only 22 percent of the homes in white-majority areas were excluded.

In Milwaukee, Wis., the results were even more striking, Ms. Chamberlin said, with the same value guideline excluding 98 percent of the houses in the minority areas while excluding 45 percent in white-majority areas.

Ms. Chamberlin said that such policy underwriting guidelines, which disproportionately hurt minorities, have no basis on actuary data.

Inner-city and other similar neighborhoods, where many minority communities are located, are almost always older, and they are victims of decades of disinvestment, but "minority communities are good business," she emphasized. "You should really ask why [such guidelines] are permissible."

Ms. Chamberlin pointed out that, indeed, some of the major homeowners insurance companies have changed their ways and have eliminated such age-and-value guidelines. These companies include State Farm Insurance Companies, Nationwide and Allstate, she said.

On the other hand, there are still many insurers that use these guidelines, and Ms. Chamberlin's group has been in litigation against such companies, Ms. Chamberlin said.

"We've tackled these issues by litigating, but it would be a whole lot easier for commissioners and regulators to get that through the regulatory process. I would encourage you to look at things this way," she told the working group.

Ms. Chamberlin added that, "I honestly don't understand why regulators still approve the age-and-value limitations. I would encourage regulators to think about doing a kind of comparative evaluation to see how markets are actually functioning in the neighborhoods."