all of those thousands of trailers, it was discovered that FEMA regulations will not allow them to be placed in a flood plain or flood prone areas (I forget the exact wording) and that is why they are languishing in Hope.
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FEMA and Congress are trying to figure out what to do with more than 10,000 mobile homes hastily stockpiled in Hope, Ark., after Hurricane Katrina. Federal regulations forbid them from being placed in a floodplain, so few were ever sent to the Gulf Coast. A move is on to change the law.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5313004However, when there was tornado damage in parts of Arkansas, FEMA would not allow these trailers to be sent out to help storm victims.
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Wednesday, both Ross and Pryor repeated their calls for FEMA to move government trailers parked at Hope to Desha County for displaced residents there. The trailer were originally intended for Hurricane Katrina survivors.
Pryor said that while Arkansans opened their homes, churches and shelters to help Katrina evacuees after FEMA failed to respond quickly to the 2005 disaster, the federal agency now won't move the trailers 100 miles from Hope to Dumas to help Arkansans.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/tornadoes/2007-03-08-fema-response_N.htmSome of these trailers are now being made available for sale at greatly reduced prices.
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency hurriedly bought 145,000 trailers and mobile homes just before and after Katrina hit, spending $2.7 billion largely through no-bid contracts. Now, it is selling off as many as 41,000 of the homes, netting, so far, about 40 cents on each dollar spent by taxpayers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/07/AR2007030702628.htmlThis whole thing was a fiasco from the beginning.