LAT: 30 Days' Notice at the FEMA Trailer

[rodeodance]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-trailers20may20,0,1492719.story?coll=la-home-headlines

30 Days' Notice at the FEMA Trailer
Eviction letters go out to about 3,000 Katrina victims, who are told they're ineligible.

By Richard Fausset, Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2006

D'IBERVILLE, Miss. — The mail carrier brought the registered letter to Jessica Lessard's tiny trailer, along with a sour and foreboding comment:

"I hope you got better news than I got," she said.


Lessard, 24, tore open the envelope and felt like crying. The letter was from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It said she and her family had 30 days to leave the flimsy, government-issued box that has been their home since Hurricane Katrina.

Three weeks later, Lessard; her fiance, George Courtney; and their 3-year-old son are still worried, though they have appealed their case. The house they once shared with Courtney's stepfather was ruined by the storm, and they can't afford the Gulf Coast's post-Katrina rents. Nearby relatives are also in trailers or in homes with no room for them.

Lessard's family is one of about 3,000 in Mississippi that have been deemed ineligible for a trailer as FEMA weeds out those Katrina victims who do not meet the qualifications for its emergency housing program.

[rodeodance]

1. its the poverty (and low wages) in America where she is stuck.

...Lessard said her fiance's stepfather had indeed received a FEMA mobile home — it is crammed with six people. But that doesn't necessarily mean she can't have one. FEMA guidelines say the agency "may consider" more than one housing application from extended families who were living on one property before the storm.

If Lessard and Courtney lose their appeal, they figure they'll go to a hotel for a few days. They can imagine the money running out there, but they cannot imagine what comes next.

"We really ain't got no place to go," said Courtney, 28, who is making about $8 an hour working at an auto parts store. "I just started a new job. We ain't got no money saved up."

Affordable housing is in short supply on a coast that largely remains in ruins more than eight months after the storm. Rents have soared about 25% to 30%, according to the Biloxi Ocean Springs Assn. of Realtors. More than half the coast's subsidized housing stock was uninhabitable as of mid-April, according to a survey by the Mississippi Center for Justice, a public interest law firm.

[saigon68]

2. Here they are

WHAT NEXT? Hurricane Katrina displaced George Courtney and Jessica Lessard, with their son, Ethan. They have little money and no place to go but might lose their FEMA trailer in D’Iberville, Miss.
(Lee Celano / For The Times)


If they are homeless and jobless they are unworthy

[sandnsea]

6. She has an $8 hr job

Livin' the life of Riley according to some. Her story is playing out all over this country really, people who make next to nothing, not enough housing assistance, living in trailers on their parents' property or in their parents' homes. Lucky to ever get subsidized housing, and when they do, they're denigrated for living there anyway. I'd bet 20-25% of the country is like this, Katrina just pulled back the curtain for a minute.

Anyway, she has a job, and not even a minimum wage job. You just can't make it on those kinds of wages, that's all.

[Seattleman]

10. You are so right!

Nice Avitar by the way.

The truth is that for an ever increasing number of Americans, they are seeing their ability to earn their way to a better life being sent overseas along with the last few remaining manufacturing jobs. I remember back when the offshoring trend really was kicking into high gear. I remember telling some buddies in the construction industry that, "at least they can't send our carpentry jobs overseas.". What I didn't know at the time, was that they were getting ready to open up the floodgates of immigration. Since then, the average wage for carpenters in the places that I have lived, has either stagnated or actually fallen. All the while, the cost of everyday items and all of our necessities has continued to climb.

In another generation, the America that we grew up in and love, will be a shadow of it's former self.

[Hugin]

3. I wonder what the qualifications are?

If it's the same as a loan... The only way to qualify is
to not need a loan.

[drthais]

4. kissmyass FEMA...

"victims who do not meet the qualifications for its emergency housing program."


I would think homelessness due to the storm would qualify anyone

[zann725]

5. Agreed TOTALLY! There was that Reuter's headline posted last wk.

saying, "90 Year Old Woman Told to be Patient"... which I thoght summarized it all.

But there are ALSO many other "victims" (of prior "safety net" programs) NOW left without government aid in our society...such as long-term disabled people often forced to wait 2-3 YEARS (often most of them becoming homeless in the process)...even WITH an attorney...while they fight for their DESERVED benefits to begin. Next time you see a disabled living on the streets, think twice before you think 'they are crazy or substance abusers...it's their fault."

The System left NOT ONLY Katrina victims, but also continues to leave other "safety net" Every Men (like Disabled potential SSDI recipients) without any aid Aid at all...waiting, and waiting far longer than most mid-American's have savings to keep them afloat...and so these good tax payers end up homeless, and many timess too "defeated" to last the 2-3 years in the System battle to begin receiving benefits...while continuing to worsen in their Disability due to their dire conditions.

The FEMA/Katrina lack of aid is a sinful debacle. But so are so many other government aid programs presently. For an Admin. and a Party (the Repugs) who ALLEGEDLY proudly support "small government," their bugets and Intelligence-bloated programs are HUGE, and drain the economic blood from this economy and needs of "everyman" like vampires.

It's a sin that these 'victims' of a natural disaster are now being evicted from even the trailers they waited almost a year to inhabit (all the while the trailers sat empty)

But EQUALLY as cruel and unfair are all the lack of other "safety net" programs initiated by the Dems (most initially under FDR) that provided for "Everyman's" every day disaster needs...be they from a hurricane, or Disability, or Old Age. Like the cost of Medicare increasing AGAIN, twice in one year...decreasing AGAIN the already meager checks of the elderly. And the cost of the drugs in Plan "D" DOES cover (NOT all that most elderly need)...is often beyond their reach.

"Compassionate conservatives," indeed. Wonder how Tony Snow will charismastically "spin" this one?

[chookie]

8. I agree

I also think the homelessness due to the storm -- one of the most catastrophic in American history -- would qualify anyone, period.

How incompetent has our government become? Is this ideologically driven bullshit ("pull yourself up with your own bootstraps"), utter indifference to suffering and loss, or bungling on a breath-taking scale i.e. FEMA being run by kids who used to work in Rick Santorum's office but have no experience running agencies?

What the hell are people supposed to do?

How the HELL does our idiotic government justify evicting these victims of this catastropic storm?

First they lose everything, and then their government abandons them at their hour of greatest crisis and need.

[MrPrax]

7. Give them the damn trailer...

So they evict them and then what? The trailer goes back into mothball in AK. for the next disaster...put people to work building new ones, for fuck sake...

Give Them The Damn Trailer...!!! Let them all keep the damn trailers...who cares???

[w4rma]

9. It's my understanding that there are fields of these trailers being unused

and just sitting there rotting with noone living in them.