{"id":80172,"date":"2025-12-12T01:48:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T01:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/80172\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T01:48:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T01:48:06","slug":"20-million-available-to-help-pinellas-families-buy-homes-after-hurricanes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/80172\/","title":{"rendered":"$20 million available to help Pinellas families buy homes after hurricanes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/recover.pinellas.gov\/homebuyer-assistance-program\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">$20 million in federal hurricane recovery funding is available in Pinellas County.\u00a0<\/a>Some eligible homeowners struggling to find affordable housing have already started getting help, and Pinellas County is encouraging people to apply.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/recover.pinellas.gov\/homebuyer-assistance-program\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Homebuyer Assistance Program<\/a> is part of the county\u2019s &#8220;People First&#8221; hurricane recovery efforts. It&#8217;s meant to give people a real chance at starting over after the devastating 2024 hurricane season. Eligible families can get up to $80,000 towards a new home.<\/p>\n<p>Kesha Simon heads Pinellas County&#8217;s assistance program efforts. She said applicants can apply for forgivable loans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs long as you meet the program requirements, and you continue to meet the program requirements after 5 years, it&#8217;s completely forgiven,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>A household must make at or below 120% of the area median income. For example, a single person cannot make more than $87,600, and a family of four cannot make more than $125,000. Simon told lenders Thursday their clients can only purchase homes in Pinellas County, except St. Pete and not in a flood zone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHomebuyers are having a hard qualifying because the cost of living is not keeping up with wages in the area, so as a result, getting $80,000 is going to help tremendously in terms of qualifying for the home you want to live in,\u201d Grant Lee, CMG Home Loan Branch Manager, said.<\/p>\n<p>This assistance program is open to anyone who lived in Pinellas County, except for St. Pete during hurricanes Idalia, Helene and Milton. You don&#8217;t have to be directly impacted by those storms, but officials say anyone who experienced loss during that time would receive priority over others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 $20 million in federal hurricane recovery funding is available in Pinellas County.\u00a0Some eligible homeowners&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-80172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80172","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=80172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}