Residents in low-lying Pinellas mobile home park told to elevate houses or leave

Pinellas County has ordered dozens of residents in a frequently flooded mobile home park to elevate their homes to nearly 11 feet or leave by the start of hurricane season in June.

Residents of Twin City park, which is in the Gandy area, say it makes no sense to spend as much as $50,000 to elevate homes that are valued at half that amount — or less. Some have nowhere to go and plan to stay as the summer deadline approaches. Others say they intend to move out of Florida because of hurricanes, sea-level rise and flooding.

“I’ve done it for 10 years,” said Douglas McVey, who replaced the floors in his home five times after storms. “I’m done.”

In October, Pinellas County sent letters to residents of 82 Twin City homes, including McVey, requiring that they elevate or evacuate their homes by June 1. It’s the first time in at least five years that the county has issued the “notices of temporary occupancy,” county officials said. Twin City residents were the only people to receive the letter from the county after Hurricane Idalia.

The county participates in the National Flood Insurance Program, which means it has adopted federal flood-plain regulations in exchange for having flood insurance available to the community.

The elevation notices sent to Twin City help keep the county in line with those federal guidelines so it doesn’t lose this source of disaster assistance funds, county officials said.

They say residents of the park, which was built before Pinellas County put those requirements in place, need to comply with changing flood-plain maps consistent with projected sea-level rise.

The county’s flood-plain manager, Lisa Foster, said it’s in residents’ “best interest to elevate or relocate before next hurricane season.”

“The premise of the requirements are logical,” she said. “We’re trying to protect people — ultimately that’s the end goal — because we don’t want them to repetitively flood. Especially these individuals. They have more trouble than others, in some cases, to be able to get back up on their feet after a flood.”

Foster said it’s “really too early to tell” what would happen to people who don’t leave. There are no plans to condemn the homes or compensate homeowners in Twin City, according to a county spokesperson.

“It’s very unfortunate,” Foster said. “We’re working toward identifying potential long-term solutions, but this is not going to be an easy fix.”

While the county is ordering residents to leave their homes, officials say they won’t push out owners unless their structures are deemed uninhabitable.

County code enforcement can only condemn a property if it is dangerous to human life, said David Connor, a county spokesperson. In Twin City, that’s not the case, he added.

“We don’t evict people, and we can’t speculate what will happen,” Connor said.

Instead, the county hopes to work with residents who don’t leave to make their homes safe from future storms.

Since the notices were sent, the county says it has helped residents apply for low-interest disaster loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration and individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Five months after the county’s order, Pinellas planning and building records show no permits have been pulled to elevate structures in Twin City.

Residents, many of whom have already spent their FEMA money after flooding last year in Idalia, say they haven’t received any updates from the county since they received the letter last year. Some tenants agree that living at sea level in the park has become “inhumane,” but many in the low-income community say they have nowhere to turn.

“I think the government should do more to help those residents,” said Zhong-Ren Peng, a University of Florida researcher who studies how climate change affects disadvantaged households in Pinellas County. “It would be a good idea for the county to provide some financial assistance to help those residents to move to higher ground.”

“It’s a nightmare”

Shortly after McVey bought his mobile home in Twin City, he fell through the floor.

A builder by trade, he tore out the brittle particle board and replaced it with a thicker layer of the same material. At the time, McVey didn’t realize this would be the first of many remodels to his low-lying, 826-square-foot home.

He paid $1,500 for the structure, which was built in 1966, and estimates he put more than $60,000 into his labor of love, most of which went to repairing its floors.

McVey didn’t know the mobile home park was prone to flooding when he moved here. The community sits less than a mile from Riviera Bay, with Old Tampa Bay to the east.

“Maybe I was naive 10 years ago,” he said.

Floodwaters in 2017 were a wake-up call. McVey found his home leaning on one side after a storm washed away the support underneath. He replaced the waterlogged floors with vinyl planks.

Just two weeks after he finished renovations, Tropical Storm Eta in 2020 brought him back to square one. This time, McVey sank extra money into custom hardwood flooring.

Last year, when Hurricane Idalia’s surge buckled the mobile home and left its floors sagging in the center, McVey decided enough was enough.

He and his wife, Tabitha Vavrick, hauled their belongings to Pennsylvania, her home state, and lived with relatives and in hotels and Airbnbs.

When he returned to Florida with plans to sell the mobile home, McVey was met with the letter from Pinellas County public works in his mailbox. It outlined three options: “replace your home and elevate it,” “move your home” or “move to a new home.”

Their mobile home sits at 5½ feet of elevation, meaning the county is requiring they raise it about 5 feet. The couple says that’s impossible.

“It’s been flooded numerous times with salt water, brackish water. So, the frame under there, it’s still kind of there but it’s not,” Vavrick said. “It can’t be lifted that far up and still have integrity. The home is going to collapse on itself.”

Vavrick called their home her “oasis.” But never-ending repairs and mounting anxiety about rising seas pushed the couple to move out.

“We just need to get something so that we can get back on our feet — so we can move on and just be done with this,” Vavrick said. “It’s a nightmare.”

Last year, nearly $400 million was dispersed to Florida homeowners through the My Safe Florida Home program to help them harden their homes against storms. The program was brought back by Gov. Ron DeSantis during a 2022 special legislative session.

This year’s version of the program will only allow low- and moderate-income households to apply during a 60-day window after July 1. They can receive up to $10,000 on home improvements like hurricane windows or new roofs.

That’s too little and too late for Twin Cities residents facing an early summer deadline from Pinellas County.

While FEMA offers assistance for residents who want to raise their homes, it is fairly uncommon in Florida.

Only 274 homes have been elevated through federal grants since 1995, with Pinellas County being home to 60 of them, according to federal data. In St. Petersburg, 13 homes have been elevated since 1996.

In 2019, a Shore Acres resident paid $217,000 to raise his home in the flood-prone St. Petersburg neighborhood. New hurricane-proof mobile homes cost about that much off the lot.

McVey says that elevating a mobile home would be much cheaper but estimates of $50,000 are still out of reach for him and many Twin City neighbors.

He had hoped Pinellas County would condemn his home and give him the assessed value, which the county appraised at $8,395.

Instead, he listed his home for $27,000. It sold in December for $1,000 and the couple moved to Pennsylvania for good.

There are many circumstances that pushed McVey out of Florida — he named the insurance crisis, low wages and lack of affordable housing as a few of them — but more intense hurricanes was the deciding factor, he said.

“I don’t think anybody should be living this close to the coast, not even people that’s got a couple million dollars,” he said. “It’s just foolish.”

McVey said sea-level rise and coastal erosion are likely to blame for the intensifying floods he’s seen in the mobile home park.

“It’s going to get worse,” he said. “And I think the county realized that this time.”

County grapples with rising threat

Pinellas County cited changing flood plains due to rising seas and risk from hurricanes as the main reasons behind the decision to mandate that Twin City homes be raised.

By 2040, the county expects sunny-day flooding to inundate coastal areas in the Gateway District, which includes Gandy, according to a sea-level rise and storm surge vulnerability report. In fewer than 20 years, Twin City would be under at least a foot of water at high tide by some estimates.

A study published last year in environmental publication Earth’s Future found that the Gulf Coast is in a state of “constant retreat” due to sea-level rise.

Davin Wallace, one of the study’s authors, said Florida’s coastline has been stable over the last 3,000 years, meaning the shoreline was growing at a steady rate. But over the last few decades, sea-level rise, exacerbated by climate change, has slowed this growth, he said.

“The importance of that is that beaches and shorelines and these kinds of environments where people live and have businesses are in trouble,” he said. “And it’s something that we are seeing pretty dramatically already.”

In 2020, Tropical Storm Eta brought about 2 feet of surge to homes in Twin City, according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of National Hurricane Center data.

Firefighters waded through knee-deep water to load residents onto boats after the storm. Again, three years later, prolonged flooding from Idalia pushed park residents into boats and onto paddleboards.

They floated atop flooded streets that glimmered with spilled chemicals, waiting for the water to recede.

A Pinellas County spokesperson said staff have been in contact with Twin City park management and worked alongside the park’s owners to coordinate an October outreach event that brought Feeding Tampa Bay and other local nonprofits to help residents. Since then, the county says it has worked closely with owners to determine the park’s future.

But residents who spoke with the Times say they haven’t heard any new information from Twin City’s management company. Multiple calls and emails from a Times reporter to representatives for the mobile home park owners, Lakeshore MHC, went unanswered.

Emails requested by the Times between Lakeshore managers and county staff show correspondence between the two started in July. That’s when county staff asked property managers for a list of homeowners in the park that could be shared with emergency services ahead of the next big storm.

That big storm came in August with Idalia.

In September, the county conducted damage assessments on the property. The letters arrived the next month.

Foster, the county flood-plain manager, said the fate of each mobile home in Twin City will be decided case by case. If the homeowners can show they are in talks with a contractor about elevating their house or that they have applied for flood insurance money, they may be granted an extension.

“We just really want to work with these residents and try to find resources for them so that we can get them into safe structures,” Foster said.

Peng, whose research focuses on climate gentrification, says that’s not enough.

Low-income residents are more vulnerable to flooding and don’t have the resources to prepare for future sea-level rise, he said. This means local governments have an obligation to help residents who can no longer stay where they live.

“There is a cost to the county to relocate or provide assistance to local residents who are currently most vulnerable to the flooding, of course,” he said. “You have to think about the long run — if you continue to flood in those areas, the cost will be even higher.”

And time is running out, he added.

“June from now is only three or four months away,” Peng said. “If you want to apply for money, you have to do it right now.”

Erin Roth, a longtime Twin City resident, said the community isn’t prepared for its summer deadline.

“A lot of these people don’t understand the severity of the situation we’re all about to face,” she said. “100-and-some people — families — are about to lose probably the only thing they can afford.”

“I can’t handle it anymore.”

Anytime a thunderstorm approaches, Roth, 43, panics.

“It rains and I’m on the edge of the couch,” she said. “If I could never see water again in my life, I would be happy.”

Roth bought her home for $6,500 in 2009. The wheels that once supported her trailer have since rusted. Moving her home out of the park isn’t an option. Like McVey, she said raising her home isn’t possible either.

When Idalia rendered her home unlivable, Roth and her 14-year-old daughter hopped back and forth from her mother’s Tarpon Springs home to an Airbnb in Largo. McVey helped her rebuild and she moved back near the end of October.

Like many others in the park, neither have flood or home insurance. When McVey tried to get money to rebuild his home through a small business loan, he was told his home must be insured before he is approved.

A county spokesperson said there are a few National Flood Insurance Program policies written for Twin City properties but could not get into specifics to protect homeowners’ privacy.

During a December storm that brought flooding to Twin City, Roth fled to Seminole with her daughter and their pets in tow. The water made it up to her porch but didn’t get inside. A few of her neighbors’ cars were totaled by the flooding.

In October, the county appraised Roth’s home at $11,000 but said it would cost $83,000 to replace. She received $26,000 from FEMA and spent it all on repairs. Now, Roth said she regrets doing that.

Faced with the county’s looming deadline, she wished she had used the money to permanently relocate.

Roth said she would stay if she could. She moved there shortly after her daughter was born.

“I had a stable home — meaning we never moved — and I wanted that for her,” Roth said. “Is it the best place ever? Absolutely not. I moved here because I could afford it.”

“I guess we’re leaving. I mean, what choice do we have?”