USF St. Petersburg offers housing credit to students displaced by Milton
The University of South Florida St. Petersburg on Thursday said it will offer partial credit towards future housing costs for more than 350 students who were unable to return home after Hurricane Milton damaged a downtown dormitory.
The students had circulated an online petition requesting compensation after the Pelican Apartments in downtown St. Petersburg experienced "water intrusion," according to USF spokesperson Carrie O'Brion. No student property was damaged, apart from one area rug, she said. But the dorm will remain closed for two weeks as maintenance workers inspect and repair the building.
School administrators repeatedly denied pleas for compensation before reversing course in a 5 p.m. Thursday email to students. The decision comes after the petition had received more than 1,100 signatures and inquiries from the Tampa Bay Times.
"I appreciate it, as originally it was going to be nothing," said 21-year-old history major Zoë Singeisen, who lived in the Pelican Apartments with their partner.
Singeisen, who uses they/them pronouns, had watched storm surge push up to their mother's driveway during Helene. The anxiety of another storm bearing down was overwhelming as they stuffed a change of clothes and family photographs into a backpack before evacuating from the dormitory, which sits two blocks from the water's edge.
Textbooks and notes could stay behind. They only brought enough medication for a week, thinking they'd be back in their apartment in a few days.
Once the storm passed, Singeisen hoped returning to a normal routine would help ease their adrenaline-fatigued mind. Singeisen works two on-campus jobs and had no choice but return.
Their stomach dropped when they checked in to the temporary shelter in campus students' union hall Wednesday. Twenty air mattresses lined walls of a 2,500-square foot ballroom, offering no privacy in the mixed-gender shelter. The air conditioning blasted so cold that some students wore jackets inside to keep warm. The florescent lights put everyone on edge, Singeisen said.
"The situation is not easy to say the least, but the school is trying their best with the resources they have," Singeisen said.
In the past, when faced with a housing shortage, the school had booked hotel rooms within walking distance of campus. That's not an option this time, O'Brion said.
"The university is doing everything possible to ensure the safety and well-being of all students following the widespread effect of hurricanes Milton and Helene. The availability of hotels and alternative housing options in the region is extremely low," O'Brion wrote in an email, adding that the school is "actively exploring other options."
The 20-year-old apartment building, located a block from Al Lang Stadium in downtown St. Petersburg, is one of the most desirable dorms at USF. Students pay $8,000 a semester — nearly double that of similar housing in Tampa — for the luxury of living so close to campus.
Of the 352 residents of Pelican Apartments, all but 13 had found alternative housing off campus, O'Brion wrote. In addition to air mattresses, the school has also offered three free meals per day for Pelican residents.
"I've got a bed and a place to stay," said Patrick Clendenin, a 20-year-old marketing major. But he said that if conditions in the school shelter don't improve, he'll need to find another place to stay.
He'd had trouble sleeping in the frigid ballroom for the past week but needs to stay close by for his on-campus job at career services. He's facing the option of taking more time off work of paying for a hotel room, if he can find one.
He'll welcome any reimbursement from the university, he said, but "if I knew I'd have to live in a communal room as a requirement to going to USF, I wouldn't have paid the tuition to go here."
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