Her escrow had the money, she says. The premium went unpaid. Then fire hit her home
A Rhode Island homeowner says her mortgage servicer let her insurance lapse, force-placed worse coverage, then left her underinsured when fire hit.
The lawsuit, filed June 8, 2026, in federal court in Rhode Island, lands on a problem every servicer knows by name: force-placed insurance. And it ties that problem to a house fire.
Vanessa Desjardins bought her home at 12 Robin Drive in Bristol in April 2017, financed by a $265,109 FHA mortgage through Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Finance Corporation, known as RIHousing. The loan carried a mandatory escrow account. Each month, part of her payment was set aside to cover taxes and her hazard insurance premium, according to the filing.
She insured the home through Progressive, underwritten by Homesite, and prepaid the first year as her loan commitment required, the suit says. Her 2022 policy carried $255,000 in dwelling coverage, on top of coverage for personal property, loss of use, and liability. Two endorsements could have lifted those limits further.
Here is where the story turns. In 2022, the filing says, Progressive sent RIHousing several notices about the premium coming due. The escrow account held enough to pay it. RIHousing did not, the suit alleges - and the Progressive policy lapsed.
What replaced it was thin. According to the lawsuit, RIHousing bought "force-placed insurance" - the backup coverage a servicer buys when it believes a borrower's policy has dropped - with a limit of just $223,022, which the suit says covered only the amount of the loan and only the dwelling. No personal property. No loss of use. And the filing says RIHousing kept renewing that coverage year after year.
Desjardins did not know, court papers say, until January 3, 2026, when fire damaged the home. The state fire marshal ruled it accidental, the filing states. In the aftermath, she alleges, she discovered the force-placed policy was far too little to rebuild.
The suit claims it was not an isolated slip. It says a RIHousing employee told her this had happened before, and that she learned of another Rhode Island borrower caught the same way.
For servicers, the vendor angle is the part worth bookmarking. The filing names Allied Solutions, LLC, an Indiana company that, the suit alleges, was responsible under a services agreement for paying RIHousing borrowers' insurance premiums on time. The lawsuit also notes Allied is a third-party defendant in a Florida case, Kimm v. Click N' Close, Inc., over an alleged failure to pay another borrower's hazard premium. Allied has not been found liable there; it appears in that matter only as a third-party defendant.
The claims track standard servicing law. Desjardins alleges RIHousing broke RESPA's rule that servicers pay escrowed premiums on time, and a second RESPA provision that bars force-placement unless the servicer has a reasonable basis to think coverage lapsed. She adds breach of contract against RIHousing, and breach of contract and negligence against Allied. She wants actual and statutory damages, plus attorneys' fees and costs.
The lesson for anyone running a servicing shop or hiring a tracking vendor: escrow timing and force-placement sit under a bright regulatory light, and a missed premium can balloon into a borrower's loss and a federal suit.
For now, these are only allegations. Neither RIHousing nor Allied has filed a response, and no court has ruled on any of the claims.
