This is also an area of concern with renters' insurance.

Why not a husband in place of renters' insurance?

Advertisers include moving companies, roommate services and sellers of renters' insurance.

To determine the cost of renting, the Times analysis added monthly rent and renters' insurance.

"After the last fire, we got renters' insurance and bought a fire extinguisher."

Many large and medium-sized rental properties include a requirement in their lease that tenants hold renters' insurance.

When the mechanics take longer than promised, he calls the renters' insurance companies to arrange for extensions of Enterprise rentals.

Renters' insurance is an insurance policy which provides most of the benefits of homeowners' insurance.

Renters' insurance does not include coverage for the dwelling, or structure, with the exception of small alterations that a tenant makes to the structure.

Further, the liability portion of the policy, a relatively new phenomenon in renters' insurance, is something that many people should find comforting in these litigious times.

Ninety-seven percent of the 106 people surveyed had homeowners' or renters' insurance, but 55 percent did not carry additional insurance for their valuables.

Renters' insurance also informs the tenant that the landlord is not responsible for their belongings and that the tenant has coverage for them.

Airplane renters' insurance, at $200 to $500 a year, may be a good idea because many flight schools make students pay the deductible if they damage a plane when flying solo.

John Micera, a Wall Street broker, has renters' insurance with the Chubb Corporation on his apartment, a short walk from the World Trade Center.

But there is little damage to our possessions - which is lucky, since we discover that our renters' insurance covers everything except water damage due to a clogged drain.

With no renters' insurance and little income, Tiryese's grandmother, Cherie Christy, 45, asked her godmother, Roberta Slaughter, 49, to pay for new winter clothes for Tiryese.

Before going to sleep, she had called her insurance agent and found that her homeowners' insurance, so recently converted from renters' insurance, would cover part of the replacement cost of the household goods.

So it even pays for a landlord to take the necessary steps to make sure that renters' insurance will be available to a tenant, since it's in their interest to promote policies that avoid law suits, too.

Homeowners and renters' insurance usually covers these items, but the deductibles - typically $500 to $1,000, according to the Insurance Information Institute - are generally more than the cost of the gadgets, except for computers.

Multiple companies track renters' insurance in apartment complexes, by requiring the tenant to purchase insurance and maintaining a database of expiration dates, cancellations and similar information for the property owner/manager to use to ensure coverage for all units.

Last December the state's Division of Housing and Community Renewal issued an opinion letter stating that owners of rent-stabilized apartments could not require a tenant to buy renters' insurance as a condition of being granted a lease.

"I was quite shocked at how low the premiums were compared to auto or medical insurance," said Jackson Peng, owner of the Asia Restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, after shopping for renters' insurance a few years ago.

After Mr. Tripodi described extensive efforts ranging from buying ads for renters' insurance on pizza boxes to sponsoring a Nascar car - "not a place you'd normally expect an insurance company to be" - an attendee asked him if Allstate would ever change its venerable slogan, "You're in good hands."

The department said that in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew more than two dozen companies had told state regulators that they intended not to renew or to cancel existing policies in Florida - a move Mr. Gallagher said could disrupt coverage for more than 350,000 of the state's 3.5 million residents with homeowners' and renters' insurance.