Tight Squeeze: Life Inside FEMA Trailer (AP)

[intheflow]

WAVELAND, Miss. - Gus McKay slides out of bed at dawn, tiptoes across his family's government-issued trailer and slips into the bathroom, slowly turning the doorknob so he doesn't wake his two teenage daughters in the adjoining room.

(snip)

The McKays are living in two FEMA trailers in front of the skeletal remains of their 3,000-square-foot, ranch-style home. Gus, a city official in nearby Bay St. Louis, shares one with his wife and their two daughters. Their 23-year-old son, Gus III, a policeman, shares the other with his 79-year-old grandmother.

Sure, it's crowded. But that's only a fraction of their problems.

(snip)

It will take $200,000 to fix everything. Their insurance company gave them only $27,000, and FEMA cut them a check for a mere $5,200, so they can't afford to fix everything right away. Not with monthly $1,500 mortgage payments to make.

(snip) (more)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060325/ap_on_re_us/katrina_life_in_a_fema_trailer_3

[Ian David]

1. With thousands of FEMA trailers standing empty anyway...

not to mention that they're being stored on un-even ground where they're slowly breaking in half, why not at least give families more than one trailer?

Thousands of FEMA trailers are going to be rendered uninhabitable before they ever get to be used.

Why not chop them into pieces to convert into modular home components?

Have you seen what they do on shows like Monster Garage or Junkyard Wars?

Why can't we come up with a way to break FEMA trailers into component parts that people can use to re-build their permanent homes?

We should do that for free if we can.

[Betsy Ross]

3. Hire Red Green as a consultant

to use the trailers creatively.

[Rene]

5. There's not much in the construction of a mobile home that meets

code for a home. They're basically 1x3 construction. thin walls inside etc

I think modular homes are a different story. Neighbors of ours had a total house fire in their little 3 bedroom ranch......the local volunteer 'cellar saver' firemen did their jobs.
House was totalled...if not be the fire, than by all the holes they had to chop in the ceilings and walls.

After the insurance came in....(they'd been planning all the months they were in a rental apartment) they had their 4 sectioned modular home delivered to the site installed within days over the rehabbed existing foundation. All new furniture and appliances and they were set up fabulously.

They wound up with a wonderful 2 story, 4 bedroom farmhouse/colonial with a beautiful porch across the front.....all put together within a few short weeks.

[Trevelyan]

2. k&r we need to show that we have not forgotten the Katrina victims the way

bushco planned. liveoak has an excellent journal on his journey with others to help the Katrina victims recently:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=691539&mesg_id=691539

Walking to New Orleans: Day 5

What a difference a day makes. The group of walkers is getting larger and larger as we go - where I used to see the back of the caravan in my rearview mirror, now the tail end of it is beyond what we can see or count. And that's in addition to the people loaded on the buses. Today when we left camp and arrived at our start point, Cindy was standing there waving at us. Her sister had been with us all along in a chase vehicle, but still it was nice to see Cindy.

:thumbsup: :hi: :dem: :kick:

[noamnety]

6. One of the things I didn't mention in those journal entries

We entered into New Orleans with a woman working with Common Ground, so she was acting a bit like a tour guide as we passed through different areas. We crossed a bridge over a trainyard where there was FEMA trailer after FEMA trailer sitting unused, just like the food at the FEMA distribution center in the Vietnamese neighborhood there.

I'm not sure what the deal is, it's probably bad publicity to move resources out of the poorer neighborhoods and transfer them to the richer ones at this point, but yet they are unable or unwilling to release the resources to the neighborhoods where they currently sit. So it's a standoff at this point, and honestly I don't know what keeps the people from rising up and just taking what is rightfully theirs. Particularly at the food distribution center, the barricades were those temporary waist high ones you see set up for demonstrations - and you could reach with your arm right across it and take the food. But nobody touched it, for months.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

4. I didn't read the article

did it explain why the insurance company low-balled them by 170K? If they have a mortgage, you'd think the lender would have insisted on full replacement policy.

[intheflow]

7. Usually the reason the insurance companies give so little

is that the homeowners didn't have flood insurance. Never mind that their house wasn't in flood zone prior to Katrina and so their insurance and mortgage companies didn't require them to cover it. Never mind the 150-mile-an-hour hurricane winds that blew their house off it's foundation before the giant wave washed it out to sea. This is the reason Trent Lott is leading the charge to sue the insurance companies. They even low-balled him.

Insurance companies in Mississippi = Evil Incarnate. :grr:

[merh]

8. Amen Sister!

And if anyone wants a testimonial on what it is like to live in these tin cans on wheels, I'll be happy to share what I know.