The Definition of a Trailer - Felix Cheong

I've found a document from the GAO (United States Government Accountability Office) that investigated FEMA's effectiveness in handling the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Some of the information could be pretty useful. They estimated that in Mississippi alone there were close to 135000 homes destroyed, displacing all the families living there. Therefore FEMA chose to provide travel trailers and mobile homes for these displaced persons. FEMA never meant for these trailers and mobile homes to be used for permanent settlement, so they set a date for the occupants to be evacuated. The document states that FEMA will house the victims for 18 months but that they have to right to charge the occupants for rent after that time. According to FEMA as of August 2007, 17608 households were still depending on these trailer camps for shelter, but FEMA wants all of these families out by March of 2009, which they have still not done yet.

Most of this document talks about how FEMA used up way more money than in had to in order to house the hurricane victims. The GAO breaks down how FEMA's ineffective management cost them over 30 million dollars wasted from failure to issue orders on time, fraudulent payments and bad choice of sites. Apparently it would have cost less to place these trailer camps in privately owned sites rather than commercial or group sites since FEMA had to pay extra for security, utilities and construction that they would not need in privately owned sites.

The rest of this pdf is just a very detailed breakdown of what FEMA spent money on, why and how they did it, which may not be that useful. The biggest message that I got from this is that everything is about money. Every decision that FEMA made revolved around it and they were considered not to have managed the situation very well because they used up money that they didn't have to.

One part that I found particularly interesting was the definition that FEMA gave to travel trailers and mobile homes, and how they distinguished the two. This is the quote that I found: "According to FEMA, a travel trailer is a recreational vehicle that is designed for short, temporary habitation, not housing. In contrast, a mobile (or manufactured) home is a structure, transportable in one or more sections, which is built on a permanent chassis and is designed for use with or without a permanent foundation when attached to the required utilities. The term manufactured home does not include a recreational vehicle. Generally, manufactured homes must meet the same requirements as stick built or conventional housing." I think it's fascinating how FEMA has to state that travel trailers are only designed for short term use, even though the people attacked by the hurricanes are still living in them since they have no place to go. This type of differentiation may work into the idea that we have had about temporary vs. permanent trailers.

Information Sources:
1. United States Government Accountability Office. "Ineffective FEMA Oversight of Housing Maintenance Contracts in Mississippi Resulted in Millions of Dollars of Waste and Potential Fraud". Report to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate. November 2007.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08106.pdf (Accessed January 7, 2010)