Heather Wendt’s father-in-law built a two-story home in Pinellas County’s Crystal Beach more than 50 years ago. Even though it’s nestled along Sutherland Bayou, flood water had never breached its doorstep — until last year.

Now, the blue carpet that once lined her staircase is ripped from the first three steps and remnants of spray-foam sealant coat her front door.

Despite water that seeped in through her garage air handler from Hurricane Helene and pooled up to a foot deep inside, Wendt has been able to live in her house and work her information technology job remotely from the second floor.

She was surprised to receive a letter in November from Pinellas County stating her home had been deemed substantially damaged. What’s more: No one had knocked on her door before making that determination.

“We were kind of shocked and thrown back with that, especially since nobody had actually come in and inspected the house whatsoever,” she said. “That was the first initial, ‘Woo, what the heck happened?‘”

Across Tampa Bay, officials have sent out or scheduled at least 10,000 letters informing property owners that their home or business could be substantially damaged, according to a Tampa Bay Times survey of local municipalities. The Times calculated the number of letters sent based on public records and official counts from spokespeople in more than a dozen local governments across the region, from Tampa to small beach communities like Redington Shores.

Public officials said they try to go inside homes and businesses but acknowledge that the letters are commonly based on brief external assessments by private companies they hired to do the work.

Recipients have told elected officials in passionate public testimony the assessments are wildly off. The ramifications can be financially devastating, as spelled out by the letters: Property owners must elevate the building, move it to a place that is not a flood risk or tear it down. If they choose demolition, they can either rebuild higher or move to a new home.

It could mean tens of thousands of dollars added to recovery costs, on top of deductibles that must be met before property owners get an insurance check.

“The stress that people are having is just unsurmountable,” Pinellas County Commissioner Kathleen Peters said at a work session in January. “They don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to navigate this, and I think the process that we’ve chosen is very cumbersome.”

Now, six months after the hurricanes, residents across the bay are trying to make sense of the bureaucratic nightmare, all while burning through savings and attempting to build back — or deciding to sell their homes. Their struggle hinges on a single piece of paper that often comes with no explanation for how the determination was made.

Some are demanding answers.

Why is this happening?

So much rides on how governments assess damaged properties.

If local governments don’t do it properly, they could lose flood insurance premium discounts for their constituents. St. Petersburg has a 25% discount, and residents in unincorporated Pinellas County save 40%.

This is because Florida is part of the National Flood Insurance Program, a government-provided insurer. If local governments want to keep federal support, they have to adhere to guidelines meant to reduce future flood risk.

If a building is determined to have sustained damage totaling more than half the value of the structure, excluding land, it must be brought up to federal standards, often by elevating it or rebuilding higher.

Property owners can file for reassessments if they think their initial determination is wrong, and there is no fee for owners in unincorporated Pinellas. Residents can hire a private appraiser as well.

The process varies by local jurisdiction. Some, like Pinellas, send letters saying a determination has been made. Others issue a notice to property owners that an assessment is necessary. Letters with estimated damage come later.

The Times surveyed governments representing the largest population centers and a sampling of smaller communities in Pinellas and Hillsborough for the number and location of properties deemed substantially damaged. St. Petersburg, Tampa, Clearwater, Largo, Oldsmar, St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island, Madeira Beach, Redington Beach, North Redington Beach and Redington Shores responded. Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties also provided counts of properties in unincorporated areas that they determined may have been substantially damaged.

Kevin McAndrew, Pinellas director of building and development review services and code enforcement, said the county has had to assess more than 4,000 homes it considered at risk of flooding in unincorporated parts of the county, when most years they have only looked at a couple hundred when hurricanes pass nearby. The county is using private estimators from the contracting company Tidal Basin to complete its assessments. Hillsborough County hired an independent company called Tetra Tech.

A spokesperson for Tetra Tech did not respond to multiple emails from the Times seeking comment, nor did the company’s Tampa location return multiple voicemails.

In a statement, a Tidal Basin Group spokesperson told the Times that the company is supporting local governments by collecting substantial damage estimate surveys “at their direction.” Staff members were trained by Pinellas County, which shares Tidal Basin’s collected data with other local governments. Ultimately, the governments review the data and determine who should get letters, the spokesperson said.

The assessment process is meant to be quick because governments must balance two difficult tasks: getting residents back into their homes while also meeting Federal Emergency Management Agency requirements for hurricane recovery.

“The process that’s slow now would’ve even taken longer,” said Pinellas County Administrator Barry Burton at a meeting earlier this year. “There is simply not enough people to do those inspections.”

Florida law doesn’t require a claims adjuster to enter a home during a damage assessment, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. But Shiloh Elliott, a spokesperson for the department, wrote in an email that insurance companies’ evaluations are generally expected to be fair and thorough. They usually rely on photos, videos or drone inspections, especially after large disasters.

This means contractors are often making assessments from water marks left on the outside of homes. Local and contracted workers use a formula to calculate the percent damage of a building. In unincorporated Pinellas County, assessors are using a federal tool that mostly relies on water marks and flood levels to calculate damage.

Residents who have received the letters have appeared at commission meetings to say they disagree with almost every aspect of this process. They say they have gotten insufficient communication from their elected leaders and are fearful that speaking up could further prevent them from getting help.

Residents who received the letters told the Times that if someone is going to tell them to demolish their house, their government needs better justification.

“They are screwing people’s lives up,” Crystal Beach resident John Richter said at a Pinellas County Commission meeting in December. “Who are these people that can come out and tell me I could lose my house unless I jump through these hoops?”

A fight to save homes

Wendt, of Crystal Beach in northwest Pinellas County, challenged her damage assessment and won, giving her the green light to repair and preserve the home that’s been in the family for five decades.

“If they actually had had somebody do an actual inspection,” she said, “we probably would’ve been through this a lot faster and without such heartache.”

The process has confused residents who have created text chains and sought help in Facebook groups to understand what’s happening.

Lance Fox is helping take on the battle for his mother, who’s in her 80s. She received her letter two days before Christmas. It said her home in Indian Bluff Island — where she has lived since 1980 and Fox lived during high school — was substantially damaged. No one went inside.

Fox said he and his mother were still waiting to hear back on their reassessment request in early March while other homes in her neighborhood have had their letters reversed. “It’s been very hard on her to go through this, and then to have the county come say, ‘Yeah, you’re losing your home,‘” Fox said. “That is just devastating.”

Jackie McCall, who lives in St. Pete Beach, received a letter saying her home would need to be moved or rebuilt higher. McCall’s house is a 1930s, wood-framed building. She had to tear out her home’s original wood floors and the lower parts of interior walls after the storms hit.

She said she spent two days pulling debris out of her home by herself and is still processing the emotional toll. Having to fight the government’s calculation of the home’s physical wreckage was extra injury.

“Going through that kind of a tragedy and then having to deal with all of this red tape, it seems really inhumane,” she said in January. “We’re still three months out, and most people don’t even have a permit.”

She eventually got a private appraiser to help overturn the government’s assessment, which said her home was 53.1% damaged. It was 33.5%, according to her own appraiser. “These letters are faulty, I think everybody knows that,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let them take my house.”

Although she made it through the process, she’s considering relocating — not only because of the storm but because of the bureaucracy she’s had to fight.

“It’s all too much,” she said.

Governments risk penalties

Assessing homes accurately can be challenging, but it’s necessary for local governments to comply with the federal standards, Clearwater Floodplain Administrator Gene Henry said.

Those standards — such as raising a home above likely flood levels — are aimed at preventing the federal government from paying out to repair the same properties repeatedly.

“Everybody’s working together to ensure that these thresholds and these standards are met,” Henry said.

Lee County and some of its cities found themselves in trouble last year when the county lost a 25% flood insurance discount for property owners. Lax assessments were partly to blame, the Fort Myers News-Press reported.

Lee County was able to restore the discount after fixing its procedures. But Fort Myers Beach is still on probation, and its premium discounts end April 1.

Pinellas County has such a significant discount on flood insurance from the federal government because it exceeds minimum building standards that reduce flood risk. The county was awarded a plaque in April 2024 for earning the second-highest rating.

Residents in Hillsborough submit a substantial improvement or damage “packet” when they apply for permits to make repairs. Hillsborough provides a preliminary assessment of whether it thinks the home may be substantially damaged. Property owners do not need a notice from the county to apply for permits.

Owners in unincorporated Hillsborough still hadn’t received notices informing them whether they may be substantially damaged in early March, nearly five months after hurricanes Helene and Milton swamped the region. But officials have estimated around 3,700 properties may have been substantially damaged, and they would receive mailers in the coming weeks.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint, unfortunately,” said Kyle Dollman, Hillsborough County floodplain administrator.

Tampa is taking a similar approach but did not hire an independent contractor. City officials complete a preliminary assessment with software, then send letters to residents who need to fill out paperwork.

The city has deemed 1,740 homes as potentially having significant damage, said Tampa Development and Economic Opportunity Administrator Abbye Feeley. But it treats its notices as a preliminary assessment. Residents also must demonstrate they did not suffer major damage at the same time that they are attempting to get permits to make repairs.

“It’s a little confusing, I’ve been told through some of the community meetings,” Feeley said. “It’s not intuitive.”

Lilian Miralda, a Tampa resident, is in the permitting process to rebuild her home that was badly damaged last year.

This experience is completely new to her — she’s had to coordinate work on her roof, electricity and walls, all while trying to find some semblance of stability.

She’s been staying in a hotel that FEMA has paid for but had to leave in March. She planned to sleep on an air mattress in her unfinished home, when she couldn’t yet turn on the air conditioning or hot water.

“My God, I lost everything,” she said, “Everything.”

Even though construction is still happening, she said builders will have to work around her.

“I still don’t know what I’m doing, it’s a lot,” she said. “I’ve never done this in my life. It’s exhausting, and it’s scary.”

Wendt, from Crystal Beach, credits her success overturning her substantial damage determination to showing up at a County Commission meeting in December. She was able to speak with an official, instead of waiting for a response.

But the journey isn’t over. She said she worries about the cost of flood insurance and about future storms.

For now, she works from home, in a corner of her husband’s childhood bedroom, surrounded by tubs of belongings salvaged in the hurricanes.

But she won’t be throwing those tubs or boxes away — she’s saving them for the next storm when they have to batten the hatches again.

Standing in her living room in February, she said “it doesn’t feel like a happy paradise anymore.”