New Orleans Boots Residents Out of Last FEMA Trailers

What a nice Christmas present to receive just before the holidays...

www.newser.com

In the five years since Hurricane Katrina, FEMA trailers have been a fixture of the New Orleans landscape—but by the start of next year, the city wants the last ones gone. It calls the 221 remaining trailers an eyesore, and says residents will have to pay fines—as much as $500 a day—if they don't move out. But leaving could be tough for those who have come to call the trailers home, the AP reports.

Billions for the banks, tax cheats assigned to key Executive levels by the President, and what happens if you are a corrupt Congressman and found guilty by your peers?





Nice.... some may say no biggie, these folks in the trailers need to go! I might agree to that if the situation in New Orleans was in a better position to handle more homeless folks, but just the other day...

The New Orleans fire and the conditions of youth in America

Five young men and three young women perished in a fire in an abandoned warehouse early Tuesday morning in New Orleans after lighting a fire to keep warm in the freezing temperatures. Flames engulfed the structure. Before firefighters could extinguish the blaze they were all dead, their bodies burned beyond recognition.

“They were all amazing, beautiful, accomplished people,” Audrey Bean, 19, told the local Times-Picayune. Her friend, Gwendolyn Faye, 19, said the group had turned the warehouse—which had no utilities—into a home, with beds and cooking facilities. Rachel Park, 27, said those who died were artists, welders, musicians; some had plans to open a bicycle collective.

The deadly blaze—the worst in New Orleans in almost four decades—was one of six such fires across the metropolitan area that night. It serves as a grim exposure of the worsening plight of the homeless, and of the desperate conditions facing young people in particular.

According to the above source, there are still over 55,000 blighted homes still in New Orleans, with over 12,000 homeless folks, many like those described above.

This has got to be the most heartless move by a city that I can remember, claiming that the last 221 trailers are an eyesore? HELLO!!! What about those 55,000 blighted homes? I guess it's not an eyesore if no one is living in them huh?

I would say more but the T&Cs forbid me to say what I really feel about the current situation of our government let alone what is being done to these folks in New Orleans...

Happy New Year?

yeah.... right..

It is such a scandal. How many years on and people still need to live in FEMA trailers? Makes my blood boil. It really does expose that the USA has a bad case of termites and dry rot. Termites are the politicians, Bankers and Insurance companies that failed to pay out over technicalities. Dry rot is the lack of investment into their people and infrastructure. New Orleans is a great city that deserves to be rebuilt and invested in. Why does this still not happen is beyond me.

This is a very complicated issue. The trailers were intended to provide TEMPORARY shelter for those who lost their homes to Katrina. Five years of living for free in these trailers.... It's time to move on. The problems in New Orleans are complex as are the insurance problems. Every single homeowner in that region should have had federal flood insurance to begin with when you consider the topography of the area. I would love to know where all of the money that was sent to N.O. went.

The "nanny take care of me" mentality of New Orleans has to come to an end. Plenty of other areas in the Gulf (Biloxi for example) that got hit just as hard as New Orleans. But, Mississippi is moving on to recovering itself while N.O. still sits by waiting for help to arrive. My advice to the squatters is to get the hell out of New Orleans and head somewhere that actually has a local government that cares to make a difference.

HUD just granted nearly $140 million in disaster recovery funds for Mississippi in november 2010. Not sure how much they received prior to this. Louisiana has had its hands on nearly $700 million dollars and counting.

From 2009

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced that the federal government’s second allotment of recovery assistance to assist the state in building back from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike totals $620 million in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding.

HUD already approved Louisiana’s first action plan for using these funds, giving the state the ability to draw down administrative and other funds. The approved plan is as follows:

* State-level set aside: $197.5 million
o Agriculture -- $57.8 million
o Coastal Restoration -- $27.4 million
o Fisheries -- $27.4 million
o Affordable Rental Housing -- $84.9 million
* Parish-level allocations for housing, infrastructure and economic development: $565.5 million
* Local and State Administrative costs: $40 million

www.allamericanpatriots.com...

Where is the money going???? I suppose given these meager figures one would think that the trailer dwellers should have moved out long ago.

This money is just a drop in the bucket as the money continues to flow into the region.

reply to post by JacKatMtn


S&F. Bump.

Great update, nasty story. But thanks.

One more detail regarding Katrina funding. Follow the money and ask why they are still sitting on nearly $1 billion of it. This FEMA trailer issue should not even exist.

Five years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed more than 200,000 Louisiana homes, the state program established to help families rebuild still hasn’t paid out more than three-quarters of a billion dollars and has come under fire from a federal judge for discriminating against black homeowners.

The Road Home program, which state officials developed in July 2006 to funnel grants of up to $150,000 to Louisianans whose homes were destroyed or damaged by huricanes Katrina and Rita in August and September 2005, has disbursed about $8.6 billion to about 127,000 families.

But officials of the Louisiana Office of Community Development acknowledged this week that more than $777 million remained in the fund as the fifth anniversaries of the devastating storms approach. That money should be going in direct payouts to about 3,000 eligible families and to help cover other recovery costs.

The unallocated Road Home funds have sat around for so long that they’ve outlived the state agency that initially ran the program. Road Home is on its second parent after the Community Development Office’s Disaster Recovery Unit assumed oversight when the Louisiana Recovery Authority — which oversaw rebuilding from the hurricanes — went out of business at the end of June, as planned by legislators in the wake of the storms.

“We’re sitting on almost $800 million in homeowner money that’s not been expended. Is that right?” state Rep. Neil Abramson, a Democrat from New Orleans, disbelievingly asked at a meeting Tuesday night of the Legislature’s Hurricane Recovery Committee, which was packed with angry residents.

coburn.senate.gov... 8e&Group_id=2b5f5ef9-5929-4863-9c07-277074394357&MonthDisplay=8&YearDisplay=2010

Here's another article on the situation, more in depth as to the circumstances, but not really enough there for me to change my opinion....

New Orleans moves to get rid of last FEMA trailers

...According to FEMA, New Orleans got 23,314 trailers.

The few remaining are on the hit list of Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who's vowed to rid New Orleans of blight by eliminating 10,000 broken-down properties over the next three years.

"This administration wants to turn a page on Katrina," said Gary Clark, a Dillard University political science professor. "The FEMA trailer has become an icon of Katrina."

But some advocates fear Landrieu's zeal to eliminate blight will hurt poor people struggling to find their way in New Orleans more than five years after Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city in August 2005.

"The blight eradication program, if not done correctly, can become a poor-person eradication program," said Lance Hill, the executive director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research, a race relations center based at Tulane University...

You're comparing Apples and Oranges, IMO.

Five years is plenty of time to get yourself situated. The trailers are an eye-sore and a constant reminder of epic failure. It's not healthy for the occupants or the city to let them remain indefintely.

I lived in my mom's fema trailer after Katrina and it sucked. haha. Good to see them go.

reply to post by JacKatMtn


Interesting I live a few miles away from a trailer/RV store and passed by a few days ago. What I noticed was dozens of those FEMA type trailers lined in the parking lot, apparently used and bought by these private companies. Makes no sense to me that we would pay with our tax dollars to help our own private citizens overcome a disaster. Then take away their homes and sell them to businesses to turn a profit on. Then we kick out the remaining people, to what...sell them off to another profit wielding corporation?

I did a search for some 2010 clips of New Orleans and located 3 quickly, 2 claiming the 9th ward, and the last I cannot be sure as to which section. While all showed signs of recovery, they all showed the still existing blight.

In the 15 min clip you will also notice a few trailers (FEMA? I don't know), but even removing those few trailers would not change the overall look of the area.

Granted, I am sure that this doesn't represent the entire New Orleans city, it's just a small representation.

The main fuel for my outrage at this current eviction process is the timing... Regardless those folks situation, and regardless the supposed eyesore to some of the more fortunate in the area, it is the holiday season, and it's the dead of winter, can you get any more heartless than that?

If they have to go, at least give them til spring... if not that much, how about a 30 day notice... Christmas to New Years is only a week... :shk:

reply to post by JacKatMtn


The 2nd video is where I am from. My mom's 2 story was under water completely for about a week. Then Rita came and did it again. lol

Bout time, if you can't get your life together after all of the handouts, maybe it's time for them to stand on their own two feet. I lost everything in a flood in St. Louis, didn't see all the help these people got and sure as hell got mysef back on track in far less than 5 years. Then again, when you are used to depending on the government for everything, and have been prorammed from birth to do so, it may explain a few things. Give 'em the boot.

reply to post by adifferentbreed


Tell that to the elderly and mothers with young kids who have no support to look after the kids, let alone find a job or even have enough money to move.

I'd like to see the state govt try and fine them $500 a day, money they don't have.

In my view it's bloody disgusting.

These trailers were meant to teach a man to fish, not feed him for five years.
I doubt Kanye will ever say anything negative about Obama, even after Obama called him a jackass.
Don't be surprised if Washington decides to make everybody happy and renovate these trailers.