The federal government typically spends up to $150,000 apiece—not counting utilities, maintenance or labor—on the trailers it leases to disaster victims, then auctions them at cut-rate prices after 18 months of use or the first sign of minor damage, The Associated Press reports.
Officials have continued the practice even amid a temporary housing shortage in Texas, where almost 8,000 applicants are still awaiting federal support nearly four months after Hurricane Harvey made landfall.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency briefly halted trailer sales following Harvey but resumed them in November, online records show. Since then, at least 115 units manufactured this year have been sold for pennies on the dollar. Many of the online auctions have listed such things as dirty mattresses, missing furniture, pet odors or loose trim as the lone damage.
FEMA has no written policy or regulation requiring disposal of used trailers, but an official confirmed that it’s a longstanding internal policy and that seldom are the housing units given to another family in need after the initial 18-month stint.
“Because of the challenges associated with damaged units, and the costs of life-cycle maintenance, and because we are required to maintain a ready reserve for disasters, FEMA, by practice, doesn’t return used units to our reserve inventory,” says Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA.
Burke was unable to explain why FEMA leases new units for only 18 months before consigning them to the General Services Administration’s online auction.
