As Hurricane Helene stormed its way past Tampa Bay in September 2024, Melissa Arledge and her husband woke to a large crash.
Winds toppled trees on the corner of the couple’s Largo home, smashing into their roof and carport.
Her husband was sick and bedridden, so they waited out the storm and its aftermath with their generator.
Arledge later removed the trees. She initially didn’t think her home had faced too much damage. But a year later, flies and bees began making their way into the house. Arledge applied to the Pinellas Recovers program to repair her windows, thinking the bugs were getting in that way.
Then this year, inspectors discovered destroyed roofing beams. There was so much damage, Arledge said, that the county needed to demolish and rebuild her home entirely.
“At that point, it was two years after the hurricanes. Insurance company just flat out denied,” Arledge said. “Without this program, I would have been homeless. The house, it was going to fall in.”
Arledge’s home is the first single-family home Pinellas has fully rebuilt using federal disaster relief money. The county celebrated Wednesday with a ribbon-cutting outside her home.
The county used part of an $813 million U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department grant it had gotten in 2025. The county’s Pinellas Recovers program handles applications.
Erica Henry, the program’s manager, said the county has six years to spend the $813 million. Arledge’s home is part of the first rollout, Henry said.
Pinellas is first focusing on rebuilding people’s homes. The county has about 3,500 active applications, Henry said, and about a third of those have been approved.
As of Wednesday, about 140 homes are going through the permitting process or have already started construction, Henry added.
The county is also still accepting applications. There are three programs within Pinellas Recovers for homeowners, which are:
- The rehab and reconstruction program, in which Pinellas will rebuild homes. This is what Arledge’s home was reconstructed under.
- A reimbursement program, where the county can pay back homeowners for what they already spent on repairs.
- A local landlord program that repairs rental homes for owners, as long as a landlord agrees to keep their rental at an affordable rate.
Henry said after the homeowner phase of the program, the county is set to help small businesses and nonprofits, upon the Pinellas County Commission’s approval later this year.
With leftover money, Henry said, the program will focus on rebuilding and improving sewers, roads and water lines.
“So that we don’t have near the same issue we had before,” Henry added.
To apply, homeowners must provide a driver’s license, bank statements, tax returns, a deed and in some cases, a mortgage statement or property tax bill. The required documents change based on what part of the program homeowners apply to. The amount a homeowner can get from the program depends on their assessed damage and if they qualify under federal rules.
Arledge said she found the program on Facebook. She applied in October 2025. It took about a month for her home to be demolished and rebuilt, she said.
She’s faced a lot of loss this last year, she added. She said both her husband and her son have died since the 2024 storms. She had just gotten off a flight back from Ohio for her son’s funeral when the county said they accepted her application.
It’s been a whirlwind, Arledge said. Now, with her new home, she’s starting to feel she can return to normalcy.
Arledge looked toward her new kitchen and gestured to her living room, where plastic tape still covered some furniture in her move. Her two dogs, Hondor and Arya, lounged on her couch behind her.
“This is really ours,” she said.
