 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Couple seek way to still swaying home
By MATTHEW WAITE, Times Staff Writer PORT RICHEY -- When Shelly Elgers does laundry, her whole house goes on the spin cycle. When her husband, the 200-plus-pound Keith Elgers, walks from one end of the house to the other, everyone else who is home knows what he is doing. The house moves. "My grandfather visited, and he thought he was going nuts," Shelly Elgers said. "He didn't want to say anything." The house isn't supposed to move. It isn't that the Elgerses wanted to live in a 1,100-square-foot carnival fun house at 7549 Pier Road, the last house on the street. But it's what they have got, for now. And it was a struggle to get that. And there is still a struggle to be had over why the house shakes, and who will pay for that. Their house was flooded in 1993, during the no-name storm, and again in 1996 during Hurricane Josephine. Flooding from the two storms cracked walls and wrecked furniture and put the Elgerses in the competitive loss category in the eyes of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. On Dec. 5, 1996, the couple got a letter from then-Port Richey Building Official Ralph Zanello, telling them of the FEMA rules. Under those rules, the Elgerses had a choice: move or rebuild the house, raising it 12 feet. "We should have just sold the land and moved," Mrs. Elgers said. But they didn't. They liked Port Richey. They liked being near the Pithlachascotee River and living in a small boating town. They wanted to stay. FEMA has a program, administered through state and local agreements, that pays people to raise their houses above flood height to curb the number of claims made on FEMA's flood insurance program. It's called the Flood Mitigation Assistance Program, and houses are ranked on a cost-benefit ratio. The higher your number, the sooner you get grant money that pays for 75 percent of the building costs. The Elgerses first went through the county to get flood grants. But the city told the couple to go through the city government. They also were told they would get their grant money soon. So in 1997, the Elgerses went ahead, got a builder and started rebuilding the house, elevated on thick poles and beams. A year later, the Elgerses were told they weren't going to get the grant that year. Two years went by. Still no grant money. In the meantime, the Elgerses got a Small Business Administration loan to cover their building expenses, with a stipulation that they would pay the loan off with the grant money. In 1999, when Zanello quit working for Port Richey, the Elgerses went to Port Richey City Hall to find out what was going on with their grant application. It was gone. The couple had to provide a copy to the city. Over the next year, turmoil would reign in Port Richey's building department. Building officials didn't stay around long, and the result would be a grand jury investigation into meddling by one of the city's former council members. And it left the Elgerses with little recourse because there was no building official around to help them. So they turned to their state representative, Heather Fiorentino. She went to the state and federal agencies and asked them to look into getting the couple a grant. Last year, the Elgerses finally got their money. "We had to fight for that," Mrs. Elgers said. And now it turns out there is more fighting to do. The couple hired an engineer to look at the house and figure out why, during a summer thunderstorm, the house sways. Or why every couple of days, they have to straighten pictures on the walls. The engineer -- and Port Richey Building Official Bill Sanders -- pointed out several places where work wasn't done according to building codes. Beams installed incorrectly, pipes exposed. And little keeping the house from shifting left or right, forward or backward. The engineer has drawn up plans to brace the supports with bars crisscrossing between the poles where there is nothing now. They don't have bids, but the Elgerses have been told the costs to fix the moving house will be $20,000 to $40,000. "We don't have another twenty grand for that," Elgers said. Some government officials have suggested the couple get a loan to fix the problem. "I don't need to take another loan out on the house," Elgers said. "We've already paid for it once. "I don't know how we got into this." For now, FEMA and the Department of Community Affairs, the two agencies that got them their grant money in the first place, are looking into the problem. The Elgerses' engineer is drawing up plans to make the repairs affordable and nicer looking than with the metal bars between poles on the plans now. The Elgerses are trying to figure out how to pay for this -- or whether they have to -- and are looking for an attorney. The problem is that attorneys cost as much as the repairs they can't afford. "I just want my house fixed," Elgers said. But coming up on six years after their house flooded for the last time, they fight on. It has become a way of life for them, fighting for their house. But Shelly Elgers still tries to joke about it. "Things could be worse," she said. "We could be homeless." And maybe someday, when their soon-to-be teenage daughter Amanda gets grumpy, she can tell her parents what thousands of other teens tell their parents: Leave me alone. Now, when she's grumpy, her mother says, Amanda yells something else. "Quit moving the house." -- Staff writer Matthew Waite can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6247 or (800) 333-7505, ext. 6247. His e-mail address is waite@sptimes.com.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From today's Pasco Times Jan Glidewell |
