Government's plan to house evacuees called misguided, too costly

[struggle4progress]

BY AARON C. DAVIS, DOGEN HANNAH AND CHRIS ADAMS

Knight Ridder Newspapers


BAKER, La. - In the two months since this season's hurricanes swept the Gulf Coast, the federal government has spent almost $1.3 billion buying 95,151 travel trailers to shelter evacuees - an effort many housing experts nationwide view as misguided and unnecessarily expensive. <snip>

The bills for creating the first big trailer park, built along a dusty road here 90 miles from New Orleans, are coming in and they're eye-popping: $22 million to prepare the lots for 573 trailers. That's about $38,000 apiece, or more than twice the average price of each trailer.

Undeterred by the expense, FEMA is building 10 more trailer parks in the region, evaluating 79 potential sites and increasing its budget for park construction by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The agency's pursuit of its trailer-park plan comes as more than a million apartments sit empty across the South, prompting many critics to say FEMA missed a golden opportunity to house hurricane victims using the same kind of rapid-response rental voucher system that was used during a previous natural disaster. <snip>

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/13038447.htm

[AlamoDemoc]

1. Darn! For a moment there I misread the headline

I thought it said "Hose" the evacuees, instead of house. Silly Me!