Share and Follow
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) — The St. Pete City Council approved its disaster recovery action plan.
It will allocate nearly $160 million to help residents rebuild over the next six years.
“I think it’s going to do two really big things,” said St. Pete City Council Chair Copley Gerdes. “One, it’s a direct injection of capital to single family and multifamily homes for mitigation and resiliency — and even reimbursement for some of the things that happened during the storms — and it’s also $20 million in infrastructure.”
Out of $159,884,000, 70% will go toward housing, 17% toward infrastructure and 13% to public services.
The plan specifies Hurricanes Idalia and Helene being covered, but what about Hurricane Milton?
“We all know, having experienced these storms, they were 10 days apart,” said St. Pete Strategic Initiatives and Grants Director Aubrey Phillips. “We are not going to be trying to distinguish was it ‘Storm A’ or ‘Storm B,’ because we would end up in an endless cycle of red tape.”
So with the majority of funds going toward housing, what does that really look like?
Here’s a breakdown.
Residents would see:
- The rehabilitation of 98 storm-damaged houses
- Reimbursements for repairs made at 288 homes
- Assistance for 70 first-time home buyers
- 582 new affordable housing units
- Housing reimbursements for 784 people displaced after the storms
- The city would buy and demolish 14 homes severely damaged by the storms
That money that will come from the federal government as a reimbursement to the city.
St. Pete City Council Member Brandi Gabbard asked, “We’re looking at a program that is $159 million; where are we going to get that money?”
“Well, thankfully, we won’t be spending $158 million all at once, so the programs will be set up to spend out over a period of six years,” said St. Pete Assistant City Administrator Tom Greene. “It’s set up as a line of credit, and so when we incur the expense, we will submit that to HUD for reimbursement so the flow would be, you know, three days.”