FOLEY, Ala. — A.C. Leggett of Riverside Drive in south Mobile calls it gambling.

“I’m gambling my house isn’t going to be hit,” she said, a reference to her homeowner’s insurance going up four times over what it was last year.

It’s wind and hail coverage that would push her premium to $4,000, according to Allstate, her insurance provider.

But, as Leggett notes, she recently found out that Riverside Drive is the highest ridge in that part of the city. She’s not in a flood area. Actually, she’s two miles from Mobile Bay, and the last insurance claim she had was in connection with Hurricane Frederic in 1979 — not over $2,000, she said.

“I thought I was building up a relationship,” she said of her insurance carrier. “Then, I got my notice.”

The only circumstance to change since her insurance costs have skyrocketed is the fact she’s paid off the home she’s been living in since the 1970s.

Hers is a familiar refrain on this side of the bay, in Baldwin County, and that’s why Leggett has gotten involved with the Homeowners’ Hurricane Insurance Initiative (HHII), an ACT-II organization that has been active in Baldwin County for years.

ACT-II (All Churches Together) is under the auspices of Ecumenical Ministries Inc. and has been addressing social issues in the county since the 1990s.

Leggett, who learned about HHII in early March, was one of dozens of citizens who made a trip to Montgomery recently to talk to legislators about the homeowners’ insurance crisis affecting coastal Alabama.

Now, Leggett and others are pointing to an April 6 meeting sponsored by HHII to be held at Robertsdale Coliseum at 7 p.m. At the meeting, members of the Baldwin County legislative delegation, who told hundreds of citizens last November that they would work toward a solution to the insurance crisis, are scheduled to report on their progress.

The November 2008 meeting was held at First Baptist Church, Foley, and over 500 citizens from across the county were in attendance.

Leggett believes Mobile residents probably don’t realize the breadth of the insurance crisis, but she said it’s probably about the same in both counties. She has a feeling some residents in the Mobile area have gone without homeowners’ insurance for several years due to the increase in premiums or being dropped by their carriers.

“These people are well-organized,” she said of HHII, and that’s why she is “beating the bushes” in an effort to get Mobile residents to the April 6 meeting at the Coliseum.

She said Mobile hasn’t done the canvassing that ACT-II and HHII have, so she and others in Mobile are trying to “grow the numbers, since that’s the only thing politicians recognize.”

Flyers have recently been handed out in Mobile regarding the insurance crisis and the April 6 meeting. According to Leggett, Allstate has dropped the coverage of many in Mobile the way they did her. She refers to the notice about her $4,000 premium as being a “bully-kind of invoice,” and said the local insurance crisis coupled with the national recession is “squeezing people out of the ownership of homes.”

For Leggett, there are doubts about the legislators’ intervention in the insurance crisis on behalf of citizens.

“I don’t see them working for Baldwin County. I see them working with the insurance people,” she said.

Refusing to identify the legislator, Leggett referred to a give and take that occurred in Montgomery when HHII made the bus trip to Montgomery. She said one person told a legislator about a loved one who had to use every third Social Security check to pay her quarterly insurance premium on her house; that residents had a right to expect reasonable insurance rates.

The legislator’s response, according to Leggett, was that insurance isn’t a right. “That’s not a God-given right to have insurance on your home,” she quoted the legislator as saying. Based on that response, breath is the only God-given right, according to Leggett, who added that if breath could be measured the politicians would capitalize upon that too.

HHII will have a prayer meeting at 6:15 p.m. at the Coliseum just prior to the 7 p.m. meeting with local legislators.

Robertsdale Coliseum is located on Fairground Road. Turn at the south end of Robertsdale High School, located on Ala. Highway 59, and take Fairground Road less than a mile to the Coliseum, which is on the north side of Fairground Road.