Posted on 06/03/2006 12:01:13 PM PDT by STARWISE
Two years after Hurricane Charley, some storm victims still haven't escaped a FEMA trailer city.
A cloud of white dust rises from the sand road of FEMA's trailer city as a U-Haul van pulls out with a screech of wheels. Down the street, a frustrated mother of five sits in front of a computer in her trailer searching for a housing grant and a way out. In another trailer, a 61-year-old waitress packs up her belongings to move to South Carolina this weekend.
As the 2006 hurricane season gets under way, many residents here are still trying to figure out how to get out of this mini-city that emerged after Hurricane Charley in November 2004.
A good many have left. Of the 551 trailers that once sat on 90 acres of parched grassland between cow pastures and a county jail, FEMA has removed 350. Only 165 are still inhabited. By September, ready or not, those remaining will be forced to leave.
But the lessons learned here have convinced many that this experiment in post-storm living is not the best way to shelter homeless evacuees. Emergency leaders say trailer cities end up with the same social ills often found in large-scale public housing, problems federal officials have tried to eradicate over the past decade. The large tracts of land needed also are usually not close to town centers, further isolating people from the services they need.
"In the beginning, this was an adventure in living,'' said Bob Hebert, director of recovery for Charlotte County, standing before a ghost town of trailers and a pile of discarded street signs with names like Alpha and Zeta. "But after a while, it got old. Drug raids. Prostitution. Everything you can imagine, it's going on out here. It's not a good environment.''
(Excerpt) Read more at sptimes.com ...
Ping!
This was meant to be temporary housing.
The other thing to keep in mind is building after a hurricane is a slow process. I would guess many neighborhoods in New Orleans will have not been touched or rebuilding started two years after Katrina.
The photograph of these trailer-dwellers shows they have a DISH-TV network antenna on a wooden post right outside the door ... sorry, I can't feel too sorry for these folks.
You don't have to tell me ... I survived Andrew, thank God, but thousands of homes (including mine) didn't, and the FEMA cities were there for years in the Homestead area. There may still be some remnants left.
Ping!
The law gives them 18 months free, and some will take every penny.
better you then me
Ping
I have driven by this makeshift city a few times...I was in awe at how many are still there this long after Charley..some details I do know are not coming clear. A lot of these people were offered apartments to live in and get them on their feet but it was for a shorter period of time...I believe only a year long lease.
It's obvious...a lot of these people are indeed milking the cow.
Considering how many people have been affected by the hurricanes the last two summers it's not surprising that many are still in the FEMA trailers. At least those are the bigger trailers. Most of the FEMA trailers here are the tiny travel trailers.
There's a lot of home repairs and rebuilding going on but it's a very slow process when you think about how many towns and cities were destroyed. We had three entire parishes with probably 90% or more damage. That's businesses, homes, apartments, etc. Hopefully it will be a quiet season this year so that people can get their homes repaired and back in order.
I pray ..
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