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ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A St. Petersburg family, whose house was flooded twice last year when the sewer system in their Disston Heights neighborhood backed up and overflowed from their toilet, received a notice on Thursday from Pinellas County to vacate the Seminole RV they’ve been temporarily living in.
“We don’t know where we’re going to go. We don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Jim Pennington, 53. “This is kind of a last resort for us. We feel honestly…we might be homeless if we’re kicked out of this location.”
Pennington said a member of his church offered up the RV for free last November, which is parked on the side of a home in unincorporated Seminole. State law allows homeowners to put a temporary trailer on their property to live in for 36 months while repairs are being made to their flood-damaged home.
In Pennington’s case, there was no place to park an RV outside of his St. Petersburg home. He asked Pinellas County for a permit to live in the RV outside his friend’s Seminole home. Pinellas County tried to be flexible and allowed the family to live in the RV, but complaints from neighbors and a change in the primary residence of the Seminole home shifted the stance.
“The intent of the state law and the language of the permit allows residents to put a temporary RV on their residential property, which is what the single-family home property was when they initially moved into the RV there,” said Brian Pellerin, Pinellas County spokesperson. “Since then, the use of the property has shifted from residential to AirBNB, and the permit is no longer valid.”
Pellerin said the county worked extensively with the Pennington family over the past six months and will connect them to community resources. The notice from code enforcement gave the Penningtons 20 days to vacate the RV. Rachelle Pennington, 48, said she’s worried about where they’ll end up with their three kids ages 17, 14 and 11, which she homeschools.
“Now we’re under this ticking time bomb,” she said. “It’s not in our budget to go pay rent for an RV park, if we can even find one.”
Pennington said he wishes he could move back into his St. Petersburg home, but he doesn’t have any money to repair it and lost 9 months while the city considered purchasing it.
“They originally were kind of making it out, that they wanted to potentially purchase our home,” he said. “Instead, what they said is, ‘We’re not going to purchase your home because it doesn’t benefit us. It doesn’t benefit the stormwater system, or it doesn’t benefit the wastewater system.’”
Pennington said the city has known since 2016 that his home had sewage backup problems, which peaked last year. Public Works Administrator Claude Tankersley wrote in a letter to Pennington that states:
“We believe the reason sewage backed up into your plumbing during heavy rain events was because other users of the sewer system had removed the cleanout caps on their laterals.”
Tankersley said the removal of cleanout caps was likely an attempt to drain stormwater from their properties allowed thousands of gallons to drain into the sanitary sewer pipes.
“The surge of stormwater completely filled the sanitary sewer pipes until the sewage/stormwater combination found an easy way to escape — through the lowest points in the system,” he stated. “The sanitary sewer manhole and toilet acted as a pressure relief valve, allowing the water to exit the pressurized system at those points.”
Pennington said he was shocked the city blamed his neighbors for the sewage flooding.
“I think they’re trying to say, ‘Hey, our system is actually performing as it should, but the neighbors are not doing what they’re supposed to do,’” he said. “’That’s what’s causing your issue in your location.’”
Tankersley said Public Works notified the users with missing cleanout caps that they must never remove the caps to drain their yards because they risk flooding someone else’s house with sewage. The city also bolted down the manhole cover and installed a backflow preventer on Pennington’s lateral line to prevent future sewer backups.
“We wish they would have put this in sooner. I asked the city about solutions in 2016,” he said. “The sewage portion, we are hopeful, is maybe solved for the future. It doesn’t help us with recovering from our home the way it is right now and what happened already. And it doesn’t help the stormwater issues.”
Spectrum Bay News 9 requested an interview with Tankersley, but it was declined. City spokesperson Samantha Bequer said that “given that there is currently an open claim with the City for the Pennington home, we are unable to comment.”
Pennington said his claim for purchasing the home was denied in May and the claim for their ruined belongings was denied in June.
“It’s not open anymore,” he said. “We just want a safe place to live in our city…(and) the city is looking out for our back.”
The Pennington home is located in City Council member Richie Floyd’s District 8 who said he’s going to ask the administration for more information. Floyd said it’s a terrible situation, which shows the need for outreach after storms so people can get connected with resources as soon as possible.
Pennington said that since they lived on high ground, they did not have flood insurance, the window to apply for an SBA loan has long passed and he’s not sure how they’re going to afford the estimated $150,000 to repair their sewage damaged home.
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Josh Rojas
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