I understand your sentiment, but the mortgage was issued conditional on maintaining home insurance.

Without an active policy, the lender is subject to much greater risk. If the house burns down sans insurance, the lender is now SOL.

And as the sibling response states, foreclosure is rarely a fast process. The problem is it can be very hard to find a policy if there's a gap in coverage, even more so if insurers are leaving the market.

I don't know about the US but in the UK you can sort out new insurance in a few minutes - though one of the questions is usually 'have you ever had an insurance policy canceled or refused' - answering yes to that can cause significant issues. Lying and getting found out later causes even more problems.

Similar here (varies by state). Switching from an active policy to a new policy is usually easy. Gaps in coverage, especially when a policy was canceled for cause, can be a problem.

CA and FL have their own problems due to local weather/climate (fires, hurricanes) and insurance regulations. Insurers are jacking up rates in FL and leaving that market. I'm not as familiar with CA, but it sounds like they're doing the same there.

Of course there is a grace period. Lenders lose a lot of money on the typical foreclosure and are in no rush to foreclose upon a property. They will work with the homeowner for a while to resolve any issues before resorting to foreclosure.

I would prefer not to subsidize other people the way you're describing.