Thousands of south Louisiana residents remain stuck in shelters, living in hotels or staying in the spare bedrooms of family and friends after flooding ravaged their homes, creating a housing crunch that may bring back temporary housing units like those that dotted the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
Just don’t call it a FEMA trailer.
As The Associated Press reports, the much-maligned travel trailers that filled front yards and miles of vacant property in south Louisiana and Mississippi a decade ago became a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with the federal disaster response to the destructive 2005 hurricane. Families were crammed into tiny trailers that drew health worries after toxic levels of formaldehyde were found.
Gov. John Bel Edwards says he prefers a quick way to make homes habitable to get residents back inside, though he acknowledges some sort of modular housing could be needed that people can set up in their yards while repairing flood-damaged property.
The Democratic governor will unveil a package of transitional housing programs this afternoon that his administration and the federal government have developed as an alternative for Louisiana’s latest residents displaced by disaster.
The housing problems are widespread. Entire neighborhoods were inundated with water, making homes uninhabitable, filled with mildewed carpets and warped cabinets. People have spent days gutting houses, stripping out furniture, walls and flooring. But some houses still could take days or weeks to dry out—and repairs could take even longer.
President Barack Obama toured the flood damage on Tuesday and promised an effective and rapid federal response. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro will travel to Baton Rouge on Thursday to meet staff working on recovery and survey flood damage. HUD has 24 disaster recovery and housing experts on the ground in the region.
Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate has pledged that any temporary housing units that will be offered are “much improved models” and “not the FEMA travel trailers” of old.
