Finding a way out of "FEMAville"

OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. — Mayor Connie Moran wanted something better for her city's hurricane victims than rows of generic government trailers.

She envisioned a neighborhood of "Katrina cottages" — tiny, yellow houses built in a Southern style, with sloped metal roofs and big front porches. They would be built with concrete foundations, not the tenuous straps and anchors that tether trailers to the ground.

A New York architect designed a prototype cottage and set it in the center of this coastal city, where it has been winning raves from locals. At 300 square feet, it's cozy, sleeps four, boasts ample storage and is covered in handsome siding.

However, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) last month rejected Moran's funding request for an 87-home pilot project on the east side of town.

The issue wasn't cost: The cottage probably could be had for about the same price as a trailer. The problem was that the cottage would be permanent — and FEMA is not in the business of providing permanent housing.

Moran said agency officials explained that FEMA, under federal law, can provide housing only on a temporary basis after a disaster. For many Gulf Coast residents, that means the loan of a trailer or larger mobile home for up to 18 months.

As a result, the site where Moran envisioned rows of starter homes soon will be another post-Hurricane Katrina trailer park. Like dozens of other "FEMAvilles" in the region, it will be welcome for the shelter it provides, but dreaded for its potential to degenerate into a blighted slum — that is, if it doesn't blow away in the next storm.

The mayor's disappointment reflects a wider concern emerging across the Gulf states. Trailers are pouring in to house the homeless — 135,000 will be installed in the hurricane-battered region. Although many are grateful for the multibillion-dollar effort, they are worried that FEMA's reliance on trailers could spawn serious long-term problems.

Moran describes that fear in blunt terms. "FEMA," she said, "is creating trailer trash."

Some Gulf Coast officials suspect the trailers won't be temporary. They point to lesser disasters that have spawned hastily improvised trailer parks that have lingered after the 18-month deadlines.

Today, about 2,000 temporary units in Florida remain occupied despite deadlines that have passed or are approaching, FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said. In Del Rio, Texas, a 152-trailer settlement remains occupied and in deteriorating condition seven years after a tropical storm.

Meanwhile, people whose houses survived Katrina are worried that the trailer communities would be dysfunctional, depressing real-estate values and breeding crime and blight. The situation is worse in rural Louisiana parishes, where local governments are struggling to absorb a large population of evacuees from New Orleans. In West Feliciana Parish, parents are protesting 20 trailers planned near their children's school. In Ascension Parish, a woman representing a neighborhood group has filed suit to throw out 50 FEMA trailers. Half of Louisiana's 64 parishes have said they will not allow trailer parks, FEMA spokeswoman Andrews said.

Moran wanted to minimize those kinds of problems in Ocean Springs. The city of 17,200 east of Biloxi largely was spared by Katrina because French settlers in 1699 built on high ground.

Moran said about 700 houses were destroyed and the city was struggling to accommodate 600 trailers.

Some officials are trying to persuade Congress to change the law that prohibits FEMA from building permanent houses. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco brought up the issue at a Feb. 2 hearing of the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

"You know, I hate to see good money thrown after temporary situations when we could, in effect, be putting in permanent housing," she said.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's Office of Recovery and Renewal this month sent the Bush administration a proposal to replace thousands of trailers with Katrina cottages, said Gavin Smith, the state's recovery director. The proposal asks the government to look for funding from various sources, not only FEMA, Smith said.

In Gautier, Miss., Sabrina Hollins, 31, said she preferred her mobile home to the motel room she and her family had been staying in for months. However, she said, she'd much rather be in a house that wasn't on wheels.

"If another storm comes through like Katrina," she said, motioning around the trailer park, "this ain't going to be here."