ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Flooded streets, damaged homes, and repair work that stretches on for months.

That’s been the reality for some who live in flood-prone areas in St. Petersburg, especially in recent months.

On Tuesday night, St. Pete officials, along with FEMA and the Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Coalition, turned to residents to hear what steps they’d like to see the city take to make neighborhoods more resilient.

Some of the people who spoke at the meeting said they’ve lived in their homes for decades and have seen flooding get worse over time.

Mayor Ken Welch also said St. Pete is seeing the impacts from some of these storms getting more severe, particularly in certain areas of the city.

One of those neighborhoods is Riviera Bay.

Before the meeting, resident Kim Beal said she is getting ready to move back into her home there after flooding pushed her family out nearly five months ago.

Beal’s home has been a work in progress for months.

“We got five inches (of water) in the house,” Beal said. “They had to take the drywall out up to four feet.”

 Floodwaters from Hurricane Idalia took over her street and eventually her home. Her family moved into a rental in September to make way for repairs.

 “It took a long time to get contractors in place and be able to get the insurance taken care of,” Beal said. “And then contractors would sometimes show up and sometimes not.”

Beal lived in her home for 20 years and said before Tropical Storm Eta in 2020, her home never flooded.

She’s now dealt with water in her home twice in about four months: During Idalia and again during a December storm.

“It’s been very stressful, extremely stressful,” she said. “And then, you’ve got to think about what’s going to happen next.”

Future flooding in St. Pete was the focus of the city’s resilience community listening session.

“Some of the solutions will be short term,” Welch told the crowd at the meeting. “And some will require a longer-term investment, will require partnerships with the state and federal governments, with the private sector property owners, as well.”

Residents heard from the city’s public works administrator about some of those future plans.

They include an upcoming stormwater master plan that recommends $760 million in future projects to address weather events.

But mainly, it was about listening to residents’ concerns.

“We see water come up not on a king tide, not on a heavy rain, but on a daily basis, and the water just sits in the street,” one resident said.

“We lost literally everything, applied to FEMA,” said another. "And we’ve just been put through the wringer with them and have received $0. Super frustrating."

Making it easier to access assistance and installing devices to pump water out of neighborhoods were some of the requests officials heard.

Beal says she plans to move back into her home this weekend. When it comes to solutions, she says there are likely no easy answers.

“My background is in engineering, so I’m always trying to figure out a way to beat the flood, so to speak,” Beal said. “Even if you raise your sea walls or did anything except for raising your house or building a second story, there’s not a whole lot that I understand can be done.”

Those are actually all some of the long-term efforts the city’s public works administrator said could be looked at in the future.

Officials said sustaining coastal neighborhoods will be the most important issue facing the city in the coming years and this meeting was just the start of efforts to take action.