Trailer Towns -- A Housing Mistake?

As shelters close, trailer towns open for storm evacuees. FEMA opens the first of many such villages for those displaced by Katrina.

1 minute read

October 18, 2005, 1:00 PM PDT

By Chris Steins @planetizen


"This trailer-park village in the small town of Baker, La., is the first to be opened by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Many others like it will spring up as the agency closes emergency shelters across the country. FEMA has ordered 125,000 campers and mobile homes for the villages.

...'I don't think this is the most effective way of dealing with the situation,' says Ronald Utt, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington and a former US Housing and Urban Development official. 'The much more cost-effective way for the American taxpayer and socially effective way for the evacuees is to use the existing HUD voucher program.' "

Tuesday, October 18, 2005 in The Christian Science Monitor

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