FEMA Plans To Close Katrina Trailer Parks

Some Hurricane Victims Balance Risk Of Toxic Fumes With Need For Permanent Housing

(CBS/AP)  The U.S. government has plenty of reasons to move hundreds of families out of emergency trailers they have occupied since Hurricane Katrina: the start of a new hurricane season, concerns about toxic fumes and the need for residents to find permanent homes.

But some worry they will have nowhere to go once they lose their subsidized housing.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency wants to close its last six trailer parks by Sunday, the first day of hurricane season. Those parks, all in Louisiana, are all that remain of the 111 the agency built and operated in the state after the August 2005 hurricane.

It is not clear, however, whether the agency will meet its goal.

While most storm victims are eager to move out of cramped travel trailers and mobile homes, others worry about where they will end up because they are only being promised one extra month of government-subsidized shelter. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita depleted the supply of affordable housing in the Gulf Coast, and rents are soaring.

"We have hundreds of people who have the potential for being homeless because they don't have the means for sustainable housing," said Sister Judith Brun.

The Roman Catholic nun has been helping to find new homes for residents of the Renaissance Village trailer park in Baker, a small town just north of Baton Rouge.

Although FEMA is pushing hard to reach its Sunday deadline, it says it will not evict anyone who is not out of the parks by then.

A FEMA news release Wednesday said 436 households were still occupying trailers at the six Louisiana group sites, including 85 at Renaissance Village, and estimated that 383 of them will still be in place on Sunday.

Despite that estimate, FEMA spokesman Andrew Thomas in New Orleans insisted Wednesday: "Our goal remains the same."

"We're trying to get them out as quickly as we can," Thomas said.

The agency said in addition to the families in the six FEMA sites, several thousand other families are still in trailers on private sites. The last FEMA-managed trailer park in Mississippi closed this month, but eight group sites that the agency does not run remain open in that state.

Though the new hurricane season looms, much of the urgency for moving the familes stems from worries about toxicity.

Tests by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found potentially hazardous levels of formaldehyde in hundreds of FEMA trailers and mobile homes. The preservative, commonly found in construction materials, can cause breathing problems and is classified as a carcinogen.

As reported last year by CBS News investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian the chemical, used in interior glue, was detected in many of the 143,000 trailers sent to the Gulf Coast in 2006. But a push to get residents out of them, spearheaded by FEMA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not begin until this past February.

Early on, FEMA may have even pressured the CDC to downplay the health risks of formaldehyde. In a string of internal documents obtained exclusively by CBS News, Dr. De Rosa wrote in an email that two of his staff members had been directed by FEMA officials to not "address longer term health effects" of formaldehyde in a February 2007 report.

Formaldehyde is classified as a probable carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the Environmental Protection Agency. There is no way to measure formaldelhyde in the bloodstream. Respiratory problems are an early sign of exposure.

The parents of McKenzie Whitney [at left with her mother Kacey], a 1-year-old girl with wavy auburn hair, are running low on money and options for caring for the sick girl.

Born into a FEMA trailer, McKenzie was out of the dwelling in August 2007 after a 10-month stay. Her mother, Kacey Whitney, 22, a housekeeper, and her father, Kevin Whitney, 30, a maintenance man, juggle the pressures of post-hurricane life with tending to the child.

"Sunday night when I was going to work, as I was walking up to the front door, she just threw up. She had a fever. We went to the hospital and they wound up keeping her overnight," the girl's mother said. "She's always had a cold, always."

McKenzie is treated with a nebulizer, a boxy breathing machine that turns medication into mist. It is prescribed to patients with moderate to severe symptoms, and requires children to inhale for 20 minutes.

Alton Love has shared a trailer at Renaissance Village with his 9-year-old daughter since January 2007. He lost his job as a truck driver several months ago, and finding new employment is not easy because his only means of transportation are a bicycle and a bus that only comes by every few hours.

FEMA found an apartment in Baton Rouge for Love and his daughter, who lived at a New Orleans housing project before Katrina. But after the government pays for the first month, Love has to pay the rent.

Most families moving out are eligible for federally subsidized housing assistance until March 2009. Love is one of those who are eligible for only one more month because they can't prove where they were living when Katrina and Rita slammed into the coast.

"I'm carless, jobless and soon to be homeless," he said. "Things are going to work out, though."

Jim Stark, FEMA's acting Gulf recovery director, said the agency is trying to place people in apartments they can afford once subsidies end.

"It's a little beyond what FEMA would normally do," he said. "Our mission is for emergency housing. Unfortunately, the emergency housing period for New Orleans and southeast Louisiana stretched a lot longer than anyone expected."

Closing trailer parks like Renaissance Village "needs to happen," said Mario Sammartino, disaster response supervisor for Catholic Charities in Baton Rouge. He oversees 16 case managers helping trailer occupants find affordable housing.

"People need to move on," Sammartino said. "I also know that not everyone is going to reach that normality, and that's what we're concerned about."

[b-easy63]

"People need to move on," Sammartino said. "I also know that not everyone is going to reach that normality, and that''s what we''re concerned about."


Picture this: you live in a rented home and have a job in construction. A disaster hits. You lose that home and are put in Fed. emergency housing. You try to find work to get back on your feet but the government has passed legislation to let illegal immigrants rebuild your city so you are shut out of the construction market.

You try to move out of the trailer but speculators have come to your city and are buying up all the old housing and repricing it at maybe 4 to 5 times higher than you ever paid per month to make money and recoup their losses from salvaging ruined homes.

The illegals never left, they are still there, working, using social services, competing for the already stretched jobs and resources.

You need to move to find work, but you don''t have a car anymore, no transport, no money and no place to stay.

the rest of the country looks on and wonders why you are not back on your feet. Start with the inept disaster evacuation plan, the failed cities, the failed government recovery plans--and go from there.

[inventagod2]

FEMA could not see the Katrina disaster coming, why would anyone expect them not to make things worse?

Doing a great job down there, Bu$hie!!!

[walker1209]

I guess some of you are trying to be funny - but there is nothing funny about this situation. Unless you have lived the life that some of these people have had to live, don''t try to stand in judgement and for God sakes, don''t ridicule them! This is the United States, much has been given to us and we should always help those who are homeless, hurting, helpless, and in need. We claim to be a Christian nation, but sometimes I wonder where our Christian values are for the citizens of our own country. Many private citizens, church groups, synagouges, mosques, colleges, universities and schools have reached out to help those who were affected by the floods - but the Federal Goverment has failed miserably. In my humble opinion, if we can find money to kill people (i.e., the war in the Mideast), surely we can find money to help rebuild American cities and lives that have been affected by disaster. THINK ABOUT IT!!!

[trenticus-2009]

Okay it''s now time to pack your stuff and leave the free housing!! No more free ride!!! My GAWD, how long does it take to find a new home? The two photo''s are of two fat women who obviously are not starving. So why are they still hitching a free ride?

[randynason]

After three years of living in a formaldehyde-soaked death trap- do we gotta?!! I was just getting used to the constant throwing up, burning eyes and the chronic fatigue.