About 6,000 families still live in FEMA trailers all along the Gulf Coast, mostly in Louisiana and Mississippi. That’s what remains of the largest temporary housing operation in U.S. history. At one point, more than 143,000 families lived in trailers after hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit. They were never intended to be permanent homes.
The federal government has spent $5.6 billion on housing assistance. Those who remain in the trailers are mostly single-parent families, poor, mentally ill, disabled and elderly.
At a trailer park in Biloxi, Miss., more than a dozen FEMA trailers are mixed in with others that are privately owned.
FEMA’s Mississippi coordinator, Mike Miller, says FEMA probably put more people in temporary housing after Katrina than at any other time. He says this kind of operation had never been tried before and now officials are learning some things about how to withdraw.
FEMA was condemned for its handling of Katrina early on. Now, even with a May 1 deadline, Miller says, FEMA isn’t planning to evict families right away. “The housing program has been going almost four years. There’s been a lot of assistance given to help them with rental assistance, with utilities, and that continues today.”
Miller says they are “certainly not gonna bring folks out from FEMA to kick people out of trailers.”
FEMA will check on families still living in trailers and on their plans to find permanent homes. FEMA is also working with people who want to buy their trailers.
“At some point, you get to the point in the operation or the event where it moves from disaster operations to welfare operations. And that’s not what we do,” Miller says.
FEMA officials say they’re in a tough situation — caught between those still living in trailers and others in Gulf Coast communities who want to see the trailers go.
Judith Garza, a deputy chief for FEMA in Louisiana, says some homeowners consistently call and tell officials the trailers are bringing down their property values. They ask, “Why can’t this person’s unit be picked up?”
“We have that pressure on both sides,” Garza says. “We can just continue to work as feverishly as possible with that applicant to be able to get them to move on as quickly as possible.”
