Waiting for a Miracle
Thousands Living in FEMA Trailers Have No Certain Home for the Future

by Keith Burton GCN 12/26/06

Its been 16 months since Hurricane Katrina and still nearly 87,000 people are living in nearly 31,000 small, cramped FEMA trailers. The majority live in some 23,244 small travel trailers, most on private lots in front of their homes that are still only slabs. The remainder are in small mobile homes in scattered but crowded trailer parks.

For all of these people, and the families they represent, getting into a permanent home will likely take a miracle.

Most of the people living in FEMA trailers in front of their homes have the hope that they will be able to rebuild. Many are the survivors that found they either had no insurance after the hurricane, or still hoping the new build height requirements and regulations will be modified that will enable them to rebuild.

For those folks living in the FEMA trailer parks, they are residents who for the most part, do not own property. Most are poor who worked in low-paying service jobs. Work that at current housing costs, doesn't pay enough to rent a home or apartment in these post-Katrina days. They are Katrina survivors that lived in the numerous and cheap apartments and rental housing built on cheaper low-lying land that were lost in the hurricane and have no where else to live. For them, affordable permanent housing on the Coast remains impossible to find.