CITRUS COUNTY, Fla. — Karleen Sempert just can’t catch a break. In 2022, Hurricane Ian’s storm surge inundated her Fort Myers home.
“I lost my car,” she said. “We lost our house.”
In the aftermath of the hurricane, she was displaced.
She eventually moved to Citrus County in early 2023 and bought a home in a neighborhood she thought would be better, safer, and less prone to weather-related problems. But that’s not what she got.
Her neighborhood, Inverness Villages 4, turns into a sandy, silty mess after most rains, including the one Tuesday afternoon. Streets become slippery ravines. Yards get covered in mud. Existing canyons deepen from the repeated surface water erosion.
“Every time there’s any type of rain, we all cringe,” said Sempert.
The neighborhood, located outside Inverness, was built piecemeal over the course of decades with neither paved streets nor a drainage system.
Homeowners say they knew they would have to pay to pave their neighborhood’s streets, which are owned but not maintained by Citrus County.
They thought a Municipal Service Benefit Unit (MSBU) would be established between them and the county. Such an agreement would have allowed homeowners to pay for the pavement on their tax bills over the span of ten years.
Homeowners are expected to pay around $6,500 per household.
Since then, however, they learned the price could be a lot higher because the neighborhood also needs drainage ponds and stormwater infrastructure.
According to Citrus County Commissioner Holly Davis, each homeowner would have to pay roughly $109,000 to cover both the street paving and drainage work.
That price tag — which many homeowners have said is unaffordable — has led to a standstill.
In a meeting Tuesday afternoon, exasperated homeowners asked Citrus County leaders for action, and commissioners like Davis responded.
She and the other leaders unanimously voted to extend a current moratorium on new home-building in Inverness Villages 4.
They also voted to sign and send a letter to Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, which asks her office to investigate what led to the neighborhood’s mess.
It also asks her office to determine if the man who sold many of the neighborhood’s lots to homebuilders and the homebuilders themselves defrauded consumers through “an organized scheme.”
“Madam Attorney General, you are our last hope to keep hundreds of residents from bankruptcy, insolvency, or foreclosure, a situation created through what appears to be a systematic effort to defraud,” the county’s letter says, in part. “We hope you agree that this bears an investigation at the state level.”
Neighbors like Sempert share that hope. They hope Moody’s office will get involved.
“We’re caught in between the county and the so-called developer on this,” she said. “We are innocent bystanders who had no idea what was happening.”
Tuesday evening, ABC Action News reached out to Anton Van Usen, who sold many of the residential lots in Inverness Villages 4. He said he would need to review the letter before commenting.
To read more of our reporting on the subdivision's problems, click here.
