Pinellas County householders urged to struggle ‘substantial injury’ determinations

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PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — It’s that point of 12 months when Heather Wendt’s household residence in Crystal Seaside normally turns merry and brilliant.

“For us, it’s all the time been a giant factor,” she stated. “My regular is that I appear like a Hallmark film in my home.”

However this 12 months, it’s a horror film, too, after Hurricane Helene.

Three months after the house flooded, it’s nonetheless gutted and ready for restore.

In actual fact, Wendt nonetheless doesn’t know if she will restore it. And to make issues value, Pinellas County has now labeled the house “considerably broken” in a letter Wendt acquired weeks in the past.

“I referred to as my husband, and I stated, ‘We received the substantial injury letter,’” Wendt stated. “My husband stated that it was an excellent factor, however I instructed him it was not a superb one.”

The letter from Pinellas County stated her Crystal Seaside house is so broken that to adjust to FEMA’s so-called 50% Rule, she both has to raise it, demolish it, or relocate it.

Wendt confirmed up at a Pinellas County Board of County Fee assembly Tuesday to share her frustration — and he or she wasn’t alone.

“They’re screwing folks’s lives up,” one other Crystal Seaside home-owner, John Richter, stated of the letters.

They’re mad that the letters despatched out supplied few specifics or explanations as to why their houses had been deemed considerably broken.

Householders are additionally mad that inspectors didn’t enter their houses earlier than figuring out they had been considerably broken. Based on the county, inspectors measured the high-water line on the surface of houses and entered it right into a FEMA calculator to find out whether or not a house was considerably broken.

Within the Tuesday assembly, the county acknowledged the determinations are usually not a precise science, and Wendt believes her state of affairs is proof.

She stated regardless that 4 toes of water surrounded the outside of her residence throughout Helene, solely a few foot of flood water entered her residence.

“We’re appalled that this is happening and that we’ve to undergo this,” Wendt instructed the commissioners.

Kevin McAndrew, the county’s constructing and improvement evaluation companies director, stated greater than a thousand Pinellas County houses in whole are on-track to get substantial injury letters within the coming weeks, however that quantity will go down.

Pinellas County

Householders can attraction the determinations and, extra instantly, request reassessments.

The reassessments will study houses to be considerably broken in a extra granular style. Householders will likely be allowed to submit pictures and documentation, and a building value estimator, property appraiser, and licensed floodplain supervisor will evaluation the knowledge to find out if the substantial injury dedication ought to be overturned.

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Pinellas County

“For those who get an preliminary dedication of considerable injury, pursue the reassessment,” McAndrew urged.

Wendt is beginning that course of.

“We’ll struggle it as a lot as we are able to,” she stated.

Nevertheless, there’s no assure she’ll win that struggle and be allowed to rebuild.

“You undergo the motions of what do I do subsequent?” she stated. “I don’t even know the place to go along with this. I can’t sit right here and simply demolish this home simply because the county stated that.”

To study extra about Pinellas County’s reassessment and attraction course of, click on right here.



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