February 26, 2009
By Gerard Shields
2TheAdvocate - Baton Rouge, LA
WASHINGTON — FEMA spent more than $7.2 billion to house hurricane victims in mobile units, including travel trailers, that were eventually scrapped after reports that formaldehyde fumes affected occupants.
Photo: "Toxic tin cans". A Sheriff Department deputy patrols a FEMA trailer park in St. Bernard Parish, La. The agency says the ongoing litigation has stalled its efforts to dispose of the more than 94,000 travel trailers it now has sitting — empty and unused — around the country. (Gerald Herbert, AP)
The finding is part of a report that will be released today by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who is chairwoman of the Senate disaster recovery subcommittee.
Landrieu’s staff spent six months looking at the national disaster housing policies of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The mobile home reports also included money spent for Hurricane Wilma in Florida.
“I hope this report will hold accountable the people responsible,” Landrieu said.
FEMA officials said they have not seen the report but welcome the committee’s input. The agency recently completed a National Disaster Housing Strategy.
“FEMA and our partners recognize that post-disaster housing remains a challenge,” FEMA spokeswoman Alexandra Kirin said in a statement.
The agency will seek input from state and local governments and other federal agencies, Kirin said.
The recently released National Disaster Housing Strategy is a broad approach and a living document,” Kirin said.
The subcommittee reviewed over 100,000 pages and interviewed 88 officials for its report that also found:
- A court-ordered review of FEMA housing eligibility errors found that over 1,000 of the 5,000 applicants who applied were incorrectly denied assistance.
- The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wanted to take over the disaster housing aspect of the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita recovery, which was rejected by the White House and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials, who oversee FEMA. HUD was eventually given jurisdiction two years after the 2005 hurricanes.
- Out of 6,735 HUD multi-family housing units in the Gulf Coast region that were out of use as a result of the hurricanes, only 940 units are expected to be available by March 1.
- By August 2006, FEMA did process 719,000 applicants with primary housing requests. The agency three times attempted to adopt strategic response plans, including emergency housing, in 2002, 2004 and 2005.
In the plans, FEMA officials warned that agency staffing, programs and procedures would not meet catastrophic housing needs.
“Basically, they did nothing,” Landrieu said.
The subcommittee report raised questions of whether HUD has the capacity to handle future housing needs for catastrophes.
HUD’s inability to provide housing for its own beneficiaries, the lack of funding and the absence of planning for housing stock restoration is a concern, the report concluded.
Landrieu hopes the report can aid the incoming Obama administration, she said.
“It will lay a foundation, a platform for reform for the Obama administration,” she said.
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