The FEMA trailer glut: A lesson in government housing incompetence
On the two-hour drive from Ellisville, MS to the New Orleans airport yesterday, my wonderfully entertaining driver Van T. pointed my attention to a vast sea of FEMA government trailers–thousands of them–parked in the pines along US 59. We passed by too quickly to get a photo that really does justice to the enormity of the site, but here’s what I was able to snap:
Now, here are a few wider pics that a ticked-off taxpayer took last fall:
And here’s vid someone took in 2006. Looks exactly what I saw yesterday:
There are another 20,000 of them sitting in Hope, Arkansas.
A flashback:
Mobile homes worth hundreds of millions of dollars are deteriorating in a muddy field in Arkansas and may never be used to house victims of Hurricane Katrina because of a dispute over where to install them, federal officials acknowledged Monday.
Only about 2,700 of the 25,000 mobile homes ordered at a cost of $850 million have been installed, and at least 10,000 are sitting in Hope, Ark., according to documents and statements from Federal Emergency Management Agency officials. Though about 55,000 Louisiana families are still waiting for a manufactured housing unit, the mobile homes may never be used because FEMA regulations prohibit them from being installed in flood-prone coastal areas, federal officials said.
Members of a Senate committee investigating the response to Hurricane Katrina called the mobile home episode an appalling example of government stumbling.
“These trailers are going to take the place of those very expensive toilet seats that we remember from Pentagon days,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut. “It’s really absolutely unbelievable, and unacceptable.”
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA ordered far too many mobile homes and too few travel trailers, which are smaller, less expensive and more portable, and can be placed on lots in the disaster zone. The federal government had expected that Louisiana officials would identify sites inland where the mobile homes could be placed. But so far, with just a few exceptions, they has not done so, officials said.
“If sites for those mobile homes are not approved in Louisiana, it is possible they will never be used for hurricane relief,” said Nicol Andrews, a FEMA spokesman.
The report on the mobile homes, as well as widespread fraud in FEMA’s emergency assistance to hurricane victims, came as the federal government’s top three domestic security and disaster relief officials vowed to fix flaws in the nation’s emergency response programs.
All worth remembering as Washington once again closes in on another massive funding package to “fix” the housing crisis brought on by the subprime mess.
Government doesn’t fix problems. It exacerbates them.
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Couldn’t people actually live in them until they went under water, rather than sitting empty until they collapse?
what’s the deal with the person at the entrance? how much is that costing and for all this time 24/7 ???
good grief.
Come to think of it, rather than bail out subprime mortgagees, we’ve already spent the money for these – just give ‘em all one. (Ok, technically I suppose we’ve borrowed the money from the Chinese and assigned the debt to our great-grandkids.)
aj, they’re keeping out trespassers, you know, like we do at the border. Oh wait, never mind…
Aloha Guy, excellent suggestion.
hey string em all together and voila! a fence!
LOL aj
To bad you couldn’t stop and spend sometime with those impacted by Hurricanes Dennis and Katrina while in that area.
In fact, I did get to talk with several Mississippians hit hard by Katrina.
Thank you for your presumptuousness.
I’ve driven by this field a few times. The first time I drove by it it took a long time driving at 75 mph to get past the last set of trailers parked side by side in this desolate field.
I guess Brownie and Chertoff didn’t think anyone would notice these trailers in this sparsely populated part of Mississippi.
Note to Michelle: The amount of trailers in this field has gotten quite a bit smaller.
My presumptuousness? Sorry, I speak from 27 years of emergency management work, 12 with FEMA and 15 as a government contractor in he field, was on the ground in Biloxi when Dennis made landfall, and Gulfport when Katrina rolled in. Next time I’ll be glad to save you a room and maybe you can join the fun. By the way, did you pick up a hammer while in New Orleans?
bye scooter56, cant say I’ll miss ya.
You presumed that I didn’t speak with hurricane victims. You were wrong. How is your résumé relevant to your presumptuous error?
And what does my failure to pick up a hammer in New Orleans have to do with this post?
Yeah. Nothing.
As for the fallacy that only people on the ground were able to help, I distinctly remember that tons of generous readers of this site helped pitch in in large ways and small.
Mississipi was hit hard by Katrina, as was New Orleans, yet all you hear about Katrina is how New Orleans was impacted, nothing about Mississippi. I guess the people of Mississippi just rolled up their sleeves and got on with it.
Scooter56 You’re a little too snippy for my liking.
Nice. My thoughts exactly!
Yes, but no just you and your generous readers. Yes there was a great outpouring of help from all over the world, even the UN offered. But here all to often you throw out the Reagan lie that government is all bad. Thousands like me work hard and do great things every day in often very bad situations, yet you only seem to honor the military, firefighters,and the rare border patrol member who shots someone.
I think it’s time for Scooters bedtime, he sounds a little cranky.
A hammer in New Orleans? Sounds like a drink. Or a venereal disease.
To the scooter guy – we don’t all have to be government contractors or “on the ground” to help out. I’m a government contractor, too, but I don’t begrudge those who choose to help out in other ways.
He sounds like he always does, like an idiot.
Michelle:
Welcome to Mississippi, what were you doing down here?
And the they keep proving it time and time again.
Thanks for the photos, I’m looking forward to more!
Mine too.
And, those that helped in whatever way they could were not on the dole as FEMA employees or government contractors, who get paid to “pick up hammers”.
Michelle,
You are awesome!
You seem to be able to smell a rat with a quickness.
Scooter56, you are an idiot. Your sarcastic comment was stupid and should disqualify you from receiving any government job that us taxpayers have to pay your sorry a$$.
You can’t even spell border patrol, let alone comment about these patriots doing one helluva dangerous job protecting you and me.
Why so tense,scooter?
And this is how lefties want their lives regulated? Must be, they fight for it to happen.
Next in line, health care-sick people stacked in cords and rotting, just like these trailers.
Fundamentally
Egregious
Mismanagement
Agency
Maybe next time instead of the trailers for those who lost their homes, we could just hand out some Michele Malkin “Suck It Up” bumperstickers.
Your attacks on Michelle are getting old scooter56, I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long.
I think the point is that our government is too large to effectively deal with certain issues. Tens of thousands of bureaucrats, literally miles and miles of paperwork and by the time a decision leaves the narrow end of the funnel, the help delivered is not the help that is needed. In this case, buying thousands of travel trailers that could not be used. Time and money wasted. Again.
Scooter, that was rude.
Scooter56
Michelle was pointing out a fact of our wonderful, wasteful government at work, come on, a wasteland of unused trailers sitting out there to rot, she is not begrudging that they have been paid for by our hard-earned taxpayer money, but that they are sitting there, unused, three years after the fact. Go to bed Scooter, you’re too tired to argue logically.
ooooohhhh scooter, wow, who told you to write that? You couldn’t have thought that one up all by your lonesome.
Thanks for the report, Michelle. I’d been wondering about exactly that thing: what happened to all the unused trailers in the Katrina/FEMA fiasco.
If it’s true the trailers are “deteriorating” then that’s a crime in of itself. (We need to be careful here, since we’re quoting the NYT.) The one upside to the FEMA fiasco is that we now have a surplus of mobile homes that can be instantly redeployed to a disaster area anywhere in the continental US should the situation ever arise. This would not be the case is FEMA had mistakenly ordered perishables like food and medicine instead. If FEMA had bought 25,000 Chicken-A-La-Kings or 25,000 vials of aspirin back in ‘96, they’d have to toss them out by now. Expiration date and all that.
But a surplus of trailers and mobile homes, properly maintained, should be able to last a decade or even decades. There’s no excuse in letting them go to waste.
In the aftermath of Katrina over 85,000 families qualified for trailers in Mississippi alone. The trailers (plain white, 3 widows, no holding tanks) pictured are FEMA specific trailers, purpose built after Katrina by a couple of very large contractors who donate a lot of money to one particular party. That I don’t really care about. However that is the type of trailer that has formaldehyde issues and has been pulled out of service.
Or, better yet, we can hire competent people to do the job right rather than relying on self-serving, whining entitlement leeches who are legends in their own minds.
Your attitude and demeanor paint you as part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Would you be willing to do your job for $1300 per month with no overtime or weekends off? That, sir, is the starting base pay for a private in the armed forces – just over $15,000 a year. A steady stream of 20 or more hour days, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. You probably reaped 15k in a month as a contractor with overtime. And you whine because Michelle does not send allocades your way like she does for the military? I spent 20 years as an Army officer, and I can tell you with the utmost confidence that you would not have lasted a week even in basic training, let alone a day in a combat zone.
Oh, and while you were working on national disasters, did you happen to notice those National Guard Troops right there in the thick of things? Making a fraction of what you made doing the same damn job?
You are Exhibit “A” in the case exposing what is wrong with our government.
Amen Jim M
Well gee, we don’t want homeless people sniffing any formaldehyde when they could be out under a tree somewhere…
Please name the contractors.
No, make that in a day.
Didn’t say that.
Been in combat zones and still here.
Not only noticed but stayed on several of there bases in many disaster situations. Also stayed in a car dealerships coffee room for 5 days while in Wiggins MS. Thanks again.
Sorry scooter, I meant to post this in case anyone missed your stupid comment.
Are you saying these people should not be honored?
Hey guys and gals! Let’s play a game of “Name that Party!” (cheers) Read that article again, and watch to see which party label was misapplied! I’ll give you a hint… you identify a politician’s party by the one he/she used to get elected!
You have ten minutes. Pick up your mouses…. NOW!
On April 8th, 2008 at 10:43 pm, teresafromtejas said:
Not honored just shots.
Dang I hate it when I’m wrong!!! But I hope a fast fix makes up for it… that NYTimes article was from before the election where he ran as an Independent. Mea Culpa… and oh, so publicly.
o, happy now roster!
No soup for you!
o you are a sly one scoter
Actually, I would be happy knowing that more people employed by our government actually had a working brain.
Scooter, I have to ask, in all seriousness and humility: what was your point to begin with?
Reagan never said that all government is bad. What Reagan didn’t like was people for whom government is the first place they turn to fix everything. The federal government has its duties. Buying everyone prescription drugs isn’t one of them.
Supporting the Iraq war isn’t hurting Republicans, spending like Democrats is hurting Republicans.
Grover Cleveland vetoed a Farm aid bill that would have provided $10,000 for farmers to replant crops after a drought. His critics said stuff like “He doesn’t like farmers.” [sound familiar?] Cleveland responded by challenging people to raise money from donations and kick started it with $100 of his own. The Louisville Courier-Journal jumped onboard and when the dust settled CHARITY raised OVER $100,000 and none of it from TAXES!
Sadly we’ll probably never see another president with the brass needed to do that.
Scooter56 :
Oh yeah, that makes sense. Ronald Reagan was both governor of California AND POTUS, and he was a great admirer of the Founders and the Constitution, BUT… he believed that “government is all bad”.
Yeah, that’s it…
I remember when we had a slew of trailers at Blue Grass Army Depot in KY that were being readied for delivery to N.O.
I heard that the guys that delivered them ’somewhere’ down there were paid about $2.50 a mile using their dually pickups. And that was when fuel wasn’t that bad!!!
Can you say “ka-ching”?!
I just keep picturing that girl they put in charge of ICE, only she got a Director-level job at FEMA instead, and she’s clicking away, staring at the screen, sipping her latte, clicking the “Buy Now” button at traveltrailers.com as fast as she can….
Great idea, and have border patrol agents in some of them,they could move around often keeping the illegal runners off balance.
It’s fitting that there are now 10,000 trailers at Hope, Arkansas, the birthplace of the nations first redneck-in-chief.
scooter56, you were an evil government contractor? And now you make $1,300 per day?
I’m from Louisiana (Baton Rouge), and flmom, you are absolutely correct! The people of Mississippi rolled up their sleeves and got on with it – the people of N.O. are still whining, from wherever they are right now.
Rather than let them just sit there and rot, how about scattering them around the country at national parks where visitors could rent them by the night for a small fee and recoup some of the cost.
Naaaaaaa, lets just allow them to rot.
They have to rot, madchef. There are rules.
scooter56 = MikeB
ok, just in case anyone needs a picture….
Hope Municipal Airport — Google Satellite
redstate bluestate redstate bluestate
What were you saying reine.de.tout?
redstate bluestate redstate bluestate
That is out-effing-standing!
So here’s the multi-million dollar question. Can these unused trailers sitting on the lots be redistributed for something else–anything else? I understand it would take more paperwork and money, of course, but at least it wouldn’t be a total loss.
Or, do they sit there and rot and all that money gets wasted?
I just noticed comments #54 and #55. If Congress appropriated these assets for this purpose, and they are never going to be used, can’t Congress re-appropriate these assets for a different purpose?
Here is FEMA’s “Fraud, Waste and Abuse” contact info.
Seriously…I wonder what kind of response one would get about these trailers?
Thanks Scooter56.
It is reassuring to know that a government contractor makes as much money in ONE DAY as an enlisted man in the armed services makes in ONE MONTH.
And you assert that you not only go unrecognized for your labors, but you are an example of the “good” things the government does?
It is just my humble opinion, but it strikes me that you are part of the problem that Ms. Malkin highlighted on this thread regarding government waste.
Scooter56 apparently has no shame, Jim.
He’s like the contractors that I came across while deployed to Afghanistan. They were grotesquely overpaid and they made sure every last person knew how much they were taking in while simultaneously complaining about the suck we all had to endure.
Well heck, the Govt so badly wants to bail out those poor ignorant mortgage foreclosure victims, here’s their chance! ..a giant trailer park! A whole lot cheaper than paying off people’s mortgages..
PBoilermaker,
Good point. Just think, if the man is making $1300 a day working for a contractor, that contractor is billing the government $3000 to $4000 a day for his services. I wonder how many displaced and unemployed citizens of Lousiana and Mississippi would have been glad to perform the same work for $500 a day? Or $250 a day?
scooter, you are a douche bag..
a complete knee biter..
Our government has ceased to function. There is no stomach in Washington for anything but Iraq, electioneering, and in the case of Bush, vacations.
Maybe they could send some of those trailers to the victims of flooding in Minnesota … or Wisconsin … or Illinois … or Texas … or New York … or …
Why is New Orleans is the center of the universe and source of never-ending axe-grinding when it comes to flooding, but the rest of the country barely merits a mention in the news media when it gets deluged. Are these other locales not “chocolate” enough?
They do get tiresome don’t they?
First you have countless thousands who on their own choose to live no more than 12 feet above mean sea level and as close as possible to whatever big body of water they can find. Say, 200 yards, or so, as ‘optimum’. Let’s also tip our hats to those who chose on their own to live below sea level.
These were the sorts that routinely expect the Federal Government in its wisdom and unimaginable wealth to build foolproof systems to prevent the obvious calamity. (Yeah, we can do it! Ban incandescent lighting!)
Aw shucks, that plan didn’t work. The sea wall plan that we didn’t fix up and fix up and maintain and own and layer local laws upon local laws for generations and generations of fools (uh oh, his bias is showing) who were sinking, sinking, sinking into the soft rockfree mud of the delta. Not the plan to save the entire planet by what kind of little light you can connect to your electrical meter. (We’ll see how many tons of mercury our trash streams will now generate. Minamata desease anyone?)
Next step, “George doesn’t care” and (fanfare) lo the Democrats in Congress will save your asses. Here’s a couple billion, here’s a couple billion, here’s our welfare tribe in your city 800 miles away so here’s a couple million, aw hell, let’s give La a half a trillion, let’s give Mo a half a trillion (or not), let’s rebuild those faulty sea walls, let’s rebuild those major roads right along the shores, let’s help those wonderful people to live no more than 12 feet above sea level no more than 200 yards from that ocean.
After all, hurricanes are a crapshoot and they just can’t be depended upon to come back for another 20 years or so. And anyway, it’s Florida’s turn next.
There IS nothing like redevelopment on the Federal Tab.
Check it out…it looks just like all those busses Mayor “Chocolate City” Nagin had sitting in the lots, rotting away instead of evacuating people out of New Orleans.
CLASSIC!
Oh I can’t wait til government is handling my healthcare!
This kind of waste, along with today’s frontpage Yahoo story of credit card abuse, sounds almost par for a small number of government employees. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080408/ap_on_go_ot/government_credit_cards
(don’t know how to link it, sorry)
Healthcare is just around the corner.
Wow. Scary stuff. All civil servants should be required to tour Hope Municipal Airport, just as the Army made nearby German citizens visit the concentration camps near their villages.
scooter56. And many, many people worked for free and are still there from Churches across this country.
What I object to is some of the “union mentality” in the middle of a crisis, or as I termed once during the 1980s, a technician mentality in a wartime scenario.
I object to my tax money going for things like trailers that are not used. There have been plenty of stories about ~oh, no trailer, he (or she) is living in the Hilton!
The only word I was looking for in Comment #13 that was sorely missing in regard to Scooter56 was “BYE!”
scooter56 my brother his wife and in-laws (8 souls) spent their entire Spring Break/Easter Vacation last year swinging a hammer in New Orleans helping those that refuse to help themselves. He said that it was an eye opening experience and he will never go back.
No wonder Bush sent the military in once the idiot Governor of Louisiana finally allowed him to send in Federal Aid. One good thing about our military ChiefRZ as we both know they can accomplish any task assigned to them that requires hard work and/or creative thinking. This continues to show how incompetent and ineffective the bloated overpaid non-DOD branches of our Federal Government are. It really is time for the Federal Government to go on a fiscal diet.
Oh come on, Dave, you’ve got it all wrong.
*
*
*
*
“Douchebag” is one word. :-p
The generosity of “ordinary people” did more good than FEMA has ever accomplished. We donated to Salvation Army earmarked for Katrina, AR family members drove down in their trucks and tool boxes – which reminds me: Our Marine’s Dad struck up a conversation with a guy in a Home Depot parking lot who told him the government had given him a big check to buy all that stuff he was loading on his truck. He didn’t ask for it and he didn’t need it. They just issued it. Churches in our area filled trucks with supplies and made several trips.
Get the government out of our way. Pay the troops instead of security guards for former presidents, fat retirement packages for double-dippers, etc., etc., etc.
What is sad is how true this is with the government now.
On April 8th, 2008 at 10:27 pm, scooter56 said:
Nearly all mobile homes/trailers contain a certain level of formaldehyde, even those built by the Amish have trace amounts of it; it’s innate to the nature of the product: weather-tight manufactured housing.
Somehow I doubt if all of them are arrogant pigs like you. You need to learn to speak for yourself and not drag good people down to your own level.
Right on, has been used for years. I grew up camping in trailers and seem to be ok, with the exception of my extreme disdain for most liberals and democrats.
The problem could be that the trial lawyers have unlimited powers in lawsuits, with little or no repercussions. They spotted the poor victimized “typical black people” living in the trailers since Katrina.
Next in line to our teachers; lawyers are another cog in the train driving our country to self destruction.
Guess the occupation of about 90% of our 535 elected morons……..
On April 9th, 2008 at 10:36 am, rooster said:
As someone with a teaching degree, all I can say to that is Mega Dittos!
And yet, this is the same federal government who has let greedy politicians take from the general fund and hopes to manage “healthcare.” Is anybody way past scared yet?
Michelle, you’ll have to “forgive” scooter, he only thinks that liberals know how to help or want to help flood victims. I guess he thinks that liberals were the only ones that “picked up a hammer” or sent donations to the Red Cross.
I wonder if he would vilify the likes of Gov. Blanco or Mayor Nagin quite so easily.
Can we saint him in the liberal Hall of Heroes yet?
Formaldehyde issues in manufactured housing are not news – they have been litigated in the court system since the early 1980’s.
The culprit is part of the binding agents used in plywood. Formaldehyde is one such agent. The manufactured fousing industry supposidely took setps some 20 years ago to mitigate or eliminate this risk. As I recall, they used plywood free of formaldehyde or sent it through a “de-gassing” process.
If this is indeed an issue today, it sure sounds like someone ripped off the federal government. Using substitute materials or sending plywood through de-gassing increases the expenses in the manufacturing process. So, if you ignore a convention established over 20 years ago, you can increase your profit per unit. It certainly sounds like some mobile home manufacturers cut many a corner to reap the bounty of unchecked federal disaster spending. If true, the culprits should be jailed and their companies liquidated.
#83 – trial lawyers like John Edwards perhaps?
As someone who also holds a teaching degree, I second that, DB and rooster. Tenured teachers are like politicians- they’re lifetime appointments and it’s hard to get rid of them unless you have enough backing, know the system, or were one of them yourself.
And people wonder why more and more people don’t trust government or its educational arm- the protected public school system.
To me this illustrates the difference between management and leadership.
With management you get a bunch of paper pushers looking for any and every rule and regulation to keep from doing anything.
With leadership you get a bunch of people actually out there helping people and getting the job done.
I think this is why it’s called the Federal Emergency Management Agency!
I’m sorry JimM, where were these units/trailers actually made? Could it be China?
Gee.. where to begin. I was there, I spent 30 days in logistics in LA and then moved over to MS for 60+ days in operations. For those in the know, I was an LSC and OSC.
The problem, alluded to in the article, but never fully explored was/is the LA State Government.
Apparently they have a law that just could not be broken under any circumstances. The law bascially states that a ‘new’ mobile home cannot be installed within a certain distance of water and cannot be installed in a flood plain.
Many people ordered homes from FEMA only to find out they could not be placed on property they owned. Others ordered homes and simply never claimed them.
Yes, MS, for the most part had its act together. We had some difficulties with local townships, county officials, etc.. but, for the most part, people hung in and worked together.
MS received the brunt of Katrina and sustained much worse destruction. The areas hit were not as densly populated as New Orleans, however, whole areas were leveled. Century old brick homes simply ceased to exist.
K, I will get off my soapbox now. Hope everyone has a great day
SirKnob,
Very clearly stated. I’m sure most Americans understand that laws can’t be broken when it concerns the welfare of our citizens.
Illegal immigration.
Not knocking on you SirKnob. You said what I know about the Mississippi coast being obliterated. The difference is the victim game of NO, and the brass cahonas of the majority of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
And he’s wandering around the trailers right now, waving the $100 bill he got from James Carville…Oh wait, now he has $109 million, he probably bought his own trailer park.
I recall reading or seeing a report on the formaldahyde issue that some manufacturers indeed did cut corners.
IIRC, rushed production deadline demands by FEMA were so huge a volume of units, that certain manufacturers encountered a shortage of the appropriate construction material to get the trailers manufactured.
So, to meet the FEMA deadline and avoid penalties and loss of profit, they used whatever material they could get, potentially hazardous or not to get the trailers built and delivered.
I thought that the problem was that they didn’t hand out the trailers?
@ #2, ajmontana said:
IIRC, that person was Scooter.
@ #95, AlohaGuy said:
That former redneck-in-chief’s cronies own the trailer lot on which Scooter guards the trailers as they rot.
The kicker is that taxpayers paid for the facility capital improvements that increased the industrial value for when a new tenant moves in after FEMA pulls out.