FEMA Trailer Trash

Pause for a moment and consider - with rental vacancy rates in the South at a historic high and over 1.1 million available rental units empty the Bush regime assumed that the 300,000 families evacuated from Katrina's devastation deserved to live in massive trailer parks.

Of course, part of the problem is that conservatives have been banging the drum about the nanny state and dependency culture for so long and so every part of the government's social development infrastructure and funding has been gutted. At present, a bare 7,500 properties have been identified by HUD, Fannie Mae and others as available for evacuee resettlement out of that massive 1.1 million units. And of course now, belatedly, some conservatives are wakening up to the idea that big FEMA-built parks for evacuees may not just a bad idea socially but a waste of money.

The tab for those mobile homes is, according to industry insiders, $3.6 billion. The main group that FEMA turned to was the Manufactured Housing Institute who referred them on to individual retaillers. Clayton Homes, the largest retailler, received an initial order for 1,800 homes alone - an order it has said it intends to make a profit from. Yet the nation's largest trailer manufacturer, Thor Industries, says it has been unable to talk to anyone at FEMA about selling them trailers direct at manufacturer's prices. Where FEMA is talking to manufacturers at all it is talking to those who sold units to the government following last year's Florida hurricanes.

It would perhaps be cynical to suggest that using trailers instead of real homes, and then buying the trailers retail, is tantamount to a giveaway to an industry where 80% of political contributions end up in the pockets of Republicans and which has been declining in the last few years. And yet here I am, suggesting it.

Or maybe its just that the folks at FEMA think all poor people live in trailers.