For at least one resident displaced by Hurricane Milton, the wait for recovery aid helped put a return home out of reach. St. Petersburg, Florida, said its $173 million in funding is finally arriving after a mapping error blocked residents’ access for nearly two years.
Here’s what to know
The Sunrise St. Pete program’s funding was assigned to Pinellas County rather than St. Petersburg. Tampa Bay 28 reported that a geocoding error caused the misallocation.
Amy Foster, a representative of the City of St. Petersburg, said correcting the error required legislative tools that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development lacked.
“The reason it’s taken us almost two years is because HUD has never had this experience before, and they didn’t have the legislative tools they needed to correct this issue,” Foster said.
More background
This lack of aid has severely impacted residents like Davida Wheeler, who lost both her home and her cat to Hurricane Milton…