{"id":70822,"date":"2025-12-04T10:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T10:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/70822\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T10:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T10:29:10","slug":"the-florida-residents-left-in-limbo-among-zombie-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/70822\/","title":{"rendered":"The Florida Residents Left In Limbo Among \u2018Zombie Homes\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driving through the tranquil streets of Shore Acres, Florida, one is immediately struck by the idyllic beauty of this coastal neighborhood at the eastern edge of St. Petersburg.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Standing proud in rows of perfectly mowed lawns, bright white homes are basking in the sun of a peaceful late fall morning, the water of the nearby canal gleaming invitingly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But soon a troubling pattern starts to emerge: one in every few homes has a porta potty outside, the tell-tale sign of construction works going on inside. One boasts a for-sale sign on the front lawn. Another is eerily quiet and apparently abandoned, the trees framing the front door drooping with neglect and the windows boarded up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

These are what the locals call \u201czombie homes\u201d: properties left in a hurry\u2014sometimes regretfully so\u2014by the previous owners after Hurricanes Helene and Milton swept them last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably a third or a half of the residents either moved or are not currently back,\u201d Brian Martin, whose home was damaged in the flooding last year, told Newsweek.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe neighbor facing away from our street to the right, they sold right after [the flood] because they had two floods, they were just sick of it. They sold it to an investor,\u201d he said. \u201cOur neighbor to the left, she\u2019s applying for a federal program to elevate her home, but the house is sitting vacant.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last time that I saw any information about that was that approximately 40 percent of our neighborhood was for sale,\u201d Jason Nash, another affected Shore Acres homeowner, told Newsweek. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people that have lived back here for 50, 60 years that are older and just couldn’t go through it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A \u2018True\u2019 Neighborhood Ripped Apart By The Flood<\/p>\n

Nash, who is currently living with his wife in a rental unit in a nearby town while holding on to his storm-damaged property, has lived in Shore Acres since 2009. \u201cThat would be 16 years, minus one, because we\u2019ve been out of this house for a year now,\u201d he specified.<\/p>\n

He said that Shore Acres has always been a tight-knit community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a true neighborhood, that\u2019s the easiest way to say it,\u201d he told Newsweek. \u201cWhere you know most people and everyone\u2019s waving at each other. You meet your neighbors, you hang out with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Martin and his wife, Dr. Meghan Elizabeth Beach Martin, bought their home in Shore Acres in 2006. \u201cMy wife and I have four kids\u2014a 15-year-old, a 14-year-old, a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old\u2014so we had a four-bedroom house. It\u2019s big for the neighborhood. It\u2019s near a local school that has really good ratings. We picked the area because it\u2019s nice, kids love it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the fewer neighborhoods\u2014at least before the last big flood\u2014where a lot of people have lived for 30+ years. A lot of places in Florida, people come and go every five years,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe neighborhood has a really good sense of community. But I\u2019m kind of nervous that we\u2019re losing it. A lot of people are moving because they are tired of the flooding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem started with Helene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHelene flooded 82 percent of Shore Acres\u20142,200 homes had water in them,\u201d Kevin Batdorf, president of the Shore Acres Civic Association and a resident of the neighborhood for 40 years, told Newsweek.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMany had four-and-a-half feet or more. Most of them had a minimum of two-and-a-half feet of water. That\u2019s a lot of water. Instantly, in one day, 2,200 families became homeless,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Florida\u2014I\u2019ve lived here my entire life. Storms are always a concern…and being in a coastal area, you have to be prepared. But this last [hurricane], Helene, was very different,\u201d Nash said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is our third flood in the time we\u2019ve been here,\u201d Martin said. \u201cWe flooded during tropical storm Idalia, and then again\u00a0 tropical storm Eta, and then the third time was Helene. The first two we got like 4 and 6 inches of water, and this last time we got 42. So this last time was different. It was a lot different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the Nash and Martin families had evacuated their homes in Shore Acres ahead of the storm, leaving them as protected as they could with dam systems they built themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were expecting to have at least a foot-and-a-half of water inside our house. So the day before the flood, we hired movers. We packed up all of our furniture that we could fit, our mattresses or dressers, our appliances, our washer dryer and moved them,\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The day of the hurricane, Martin\u2019s wife, who works at the local children\u2019s hospital as an ER physician, was at the facility with their children. Martin was at his parents\u2019 house in Bradenton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From there, Martin could keep track of what was happening in the Shore Acres home from his phone with some trail cameras he had set up outside. \u201cWe had some flood barriers at the front of the door. And they worked. But then the water came above the flood barriers and then the whole thing filled up in a matter of\u00a0a couple of minutes. Immediately, it was not livable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Martins had to take everything out of the house and put it on the curb. \u201cEverything 6 feet and below got thrown on the curb, added to the mountains of debris around the neighborhood.\u00a0 It was pretty disheartening.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Nash, the devastation caused by the flood inside his home was more surprising.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was actually outside when the hurricane was right off the coast. And I didn\u2019t think it was too bad. The hurricane was about 100 miles offshore. So, I thought we were going to be okay,\u201d he said. \u201cThen the first high tide came and there was very minimal flooding, and I felt very confident, confident enough to go to bed. And then I woke up because even the higher ground that we were at started to get water at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until he could get back to his home in Shore Acres a day later, Nash held on to \u201cthat 1 percent chance\u201d that his house was ok. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t even close,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the waterline when we first pulled up and the barrier that I had built was 3 feet high and the waterline on the garage was 2 feet over that. And so I just\u2014I knew it was going to be bad,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then walking in and just seeing a half an inch of muck on the floor. And just the smell punches you in the face like a professional boxer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After the flooding caused by Helene, the neighborhood looked “like a war zone,\u201d Nash said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost surreal, quite honestly. It\u2019s almost like you leave your body and you\u2019re completely numb and you’re just walking around and trying to figure out what to do,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the hardest thing…I think I said the joke to my wife…how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018After the Flood, You’re Trapped\u2019<\/p>\n

A report released by the Resilience Action Fund, a nonprofit advocating for sustainable building practices, this summer found that home values had plunged in Shore Acres after Hurricanes Helene and Milton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the nonprofit\u2019s study, 36 owners who had bought their properties between 2000 and 2024 sold them for less than $400,000 after the storms, 35 percent less than what they had purchased them for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the flood, you\u2019re trapped, all the pricing plummets,\u201d Martin said. \u201cUnless you want to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on the house you bought, what can you do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe home next to us, two years prior to the storm, sold for $725,000, and it is my understanding that it just sold for right around $300,000,\u201d Nash said. <\/p>\n

The Martins, to avoid selling their home for peanuts, chose to raise it instead. \u201cThey take everything from under the slab and they lift it up. So we raised our home 12-and-a-half feet. The other option was to tear down and rebuild,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

They paid for the process out of their own pockets. In the meantime, they are renting a place some 2 miles away which costs almost double what their mortgage did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Martin said the process of elevating their homes is \u201cslow and expensive.\u201d The cost of raising their home and rebuilding what was damaged far eclipses the $262,000 they paid for the property in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe price to lift it, I think we paid $325,000 to lift it 12-and-a-half feet in the air and then block it in. And then we still got to do electrical plumbing. We got to put the windows in, we got to put doors in\u2026 I think it\u2019s going to be close to $400,000 by the time we\u2019re done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And that doesn\u2019t include rebuilding the upstairs, which they are just starting now. \u201cIt was our cheapest option,\u201d he added, laughing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIf all things were equal, we would have sold the house and moved. But the housing market is incredibly high to buy the same house we have. For, you know\u2014we have four kids here\u2014the six of us. In an equivalent neighborhood, it would probably be over $1 million.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nash instead has applied to Elevate Florida<\/a>, a statewide pilot program led by the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) designed to protect homes and communities by reducing damage caused during natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. Under the program, federal grant funding covers 75 percent of a home\u2019s lifting, while homeowners pay 25 percent.<\/p>\n

In September 2025, the federal funding cap for mitigation reconstruction projects through the program was raised from $220,000 to $375,00 to reflect rising construction costs. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very fortunate because the vast majority of the neighborhood applied for this program as well as other places,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were going to actually pay for the lift ourselves, we were working on moving funds around and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nashes could have chosen to sell their home after the hurricane\u2014but it was never an option. \u201cTo stay in Saint Petersburg, there\u2019s no way we could have bought anything equivalent to our home without spending twice as much,\u201d Nash said.<\/p>\n

Instead, Nash is angry at the city of St. Petersburg, which he believes is making it \u201cvery difficult for people to put their homes back together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey pretty much wanted everyone in low-lying areas like myself to either sell their house to someone that\u2019s going to rebuild it, or they wanted us to scrape and rebuild our house or lift our house to get it out of the floodplain,\u201d Nash said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI can completely understand the stop pattern because it\u2019s just going to happen again. However, they didn\u2019t give us a pathway to make safe homes, whether it is, you know, a government-subsidized loan or something else,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not asking for handouts. We\u2019re asking for a way to do it because there\u2019s so many homes back here that are built below sea level and you can\u2019t go back 60 years and find the builder and say, hey, you built my house way below what it was supposed to be. You owe me. There\u2019s no way that would happen,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Newsweek has contacted the city of St. Petersburg by email on November 28.<\/p>\n

\"\"Rising From the Ruins<\/p>\n

Nash is \u201choping and praying\u201d that he and his wife will be back in their beloved home in Shore Acres by next summer. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been accepted into the Elevate Florida program and our application is on a desk somewhere at FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency], waiting, hoping for approval. So, quite honestly, we’re in limbo. We don’t know where we\u2019re at,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A FEMA spokesperson told Newsweek: “While FEMA offers Hazard Mitigation grants for property acquisitions and elevations, these decisions are initiated and managed locally. With increased public awareness, state and local officials can proactively pursue aggressive mitigation strategies. FEMA ensures its role supports decisions that need to happen at the state and local level.”<\/p>\n

The agency redirected Newsweek to the FDEM. The FDEM redirected us, in turn, to its Elevate Florida webpage.<\/p>\n

Martin hopes to get his family back in their homes in four to six months. \u201cWe can get through anything,\u201d he said, with a big smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Asked about how he can keep positive in the face of the type of adversity that has crushed many others before, he said: \u201cWe have four kids. If we can\u2019t keep it together, then how could you expect them to keep it together?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather not have gone through three floods. But you know, every time is a little bit easier. But it\u2019s obviously not something you want to get better at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the neighborhood is quickly changing. Many of the homes are already being raised, and more are in the process of being lifted. \u201cI imagine in the next 20 years almost every home in this community will either be lifted or torn down,\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Many of the residents who used to love the neighborhood might just not be around to see its miraculous resurrection\u2014but the ones who have remained will.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will continue to prepare. More people have taken seriously the fact that they need to lift their homes out of harm\u2019s way or rebuild,\u201d Batdorf said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have managed to convince our legislators at the state level and the national level that the system for grants was flawed\u2014too much red tape,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd FEMA allowed the state to run Elevate Florida this year, I take full credit for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

With part of the $400 million available through the statewide program, 100 to 150 homes in Shore Acres will be lifted. \u201cThat\u2019s 100 to 150 homes that had no chance prior,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about a place that could be at the forefront of what many areas in Florida need to do,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Driving through the tranquil streets of Shore Acres, Florida, one is immediately struck by the idyllic beauty of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[40847,6163,2927,28,3125,1802,944,25585,1639,202,204,203,199,201,200,4503],"class_list":{"0":"post-70822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-elevate-florida","9":"tag-flood","10":"tag-flooding","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-hurricane-helene","13":"tag-hurricane-milton","14":"tag-hurricanes","15":"tag-natural-disasters","16":"tag-shore-acres","17":"tag-st-pete","18":"tag-st-pete-headlines","19":"tag-st-pete-news","20":"tag-st-petersburg","21":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","22":"tag-st-petersburg-news","23":"tag-storm"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}