Lawsuits surprise some trailer users

42 are sued as parish launches 1st wave of cases

If Thursday was moving day, no one told Craig Furden.

He has been living in a FEMA travel trailer at 713 Causeway Blvd. in the Shrewsbury community since Hurricane Katrina. Despite monthly visits from a federal inspector, he said he had no idea his address appeared in one of 42 fresh lawsuits against owners of property that still harbor the mobile box dwellings.

"Mine's on the list?" Furden said. "They didn't tell me nothing."

Jefferson Parish filed the suits Thursday to start the final push to rid unincorporated areas of what some officials have dubbed persistent eyesores. Though all the properties identified in the initial round of suits are located in East Jefferson, code enforcement officers have targeted as many as 600 trailers parishwide, including 421 in West Jefferson. More suits are planned.

The parish has long banned trailers in many of its zoning districts. But after Katrina-related flooding damaged thousands of houses in August 2005, the Parish Council suspended the law.

In March 2007, the ban was reinstated, and Parish President Aaron Broussard's administration began pressuring residents to leave the trailers and move into houses. The deadline was March 1.

Though some trailers remain, authorities have excised almost 17,000 of them since the summer of 2006. Andrew Thomas, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said it removes more than 50 trailers each week from Jefferson Parish and its six municipalities.

Eliminating the final trailers could prove a Byzantine process. Code enforcers must find them, some of which are hidden behind high backyard fences. Property owners must be located through title searches. FEMA administrators must be consulted. Then legal action can kick in.

Residents do have options, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Bert Smith said. With the help of FEMA administrators, parish attorneys will weed out property owners who have applied for home repair money -- but are still waiting for it -- from FEMA or the National Flood Insurance Program, he said. For instance, Assistant Parish Attorney Matthew Friedman cut eight potential lawsuits from Thursday's batch after conferring with federal authorities, Smith said.

Trailer residents with questions are encouraged to contact FEMA or the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Smith warned that once a lawsuit is filed, court costs will begin to accrue. It will be a judge's decision whether to charge a defendant with the fees.

The suit filings could become a weekly habit for Friedman, Smith said. "How many he'll file next, and when that will be, depends on how complicated the lawsuits will be."

Complicated could define Furden's situation
His trailer has a cozy look that transcends a temporary shelter. Potted flowers in full bloom hang in baskets from an attached awning. A glass terrarium is on display by the front stairs. Padded chairs invite visitors to sit a while.

When Katrina evicted Furden and his then-wife from a house they rented in Metairie, they moved into the trailer on Causeway. Their landlords, David and Angela Celentano, rented Furden the lot, which houses a large warehouse that once doubled as a flea market.

Furden and his wife divorced a year ago, and he kept the trailer. As a renter, however, he was unsure what effect the new lawsuit would have on him.

"They really shouldn't be bothering me," he said.

A call to a New Orleans address listed for the Celentanos went unanswered Thursday.

Louis Kabel's family also could find themselves immersed in a head-scratcher of a situation. His brother-in-law, John Sternberger, owns the property at 3801 Bauvais St. in Metairie, the target of another parish trailer suit. The Kabels live in the house.

A FEMA inspector examined the abandoned trailer in the front yard Monday, Kabel said, but no one has come to cart it away. Nonetheless, Kabel said he understood the Broussard administration's abhorrence toward the trailers.

"It's been plenty of time," Kabel said. "People should be settled in now."

Agency Is Under Pressure to Develop Disaster Housing

GULFPORT, Miss. — After the federal government announced in February that it would no longer use travel trailers to house the victims of future disasters, there was an initial sense of relief along the hurricane-scarred Gulf Coast.

The flimsy little white boxes are unpleasant to live in and tainted with toxic formaldehyde fumes. And they cost the federal government billions of dollars.

But that relief quickly turned to exasperation when it became clear that the government did not have an immediate backup plan. Without the trailers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has no reliable way to rush immediate shelter to thousands of victims of an earthquake, or a wildfire, or another catastrophic hurricane.

Though FEMA is considering several new ideas, including a so-called panelized home partially built at a factory, the agency’s effort to develop a trailer replacement has not impressed many housing experts.

“FEMA seems like a babe in the woods on this stuff,” said John Henneberger, co-director of the Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service, which is working on trailer alternatives. “They seem to be clueless.”

The view in Washington is not much different. “It just sounds like they still don’t know what they’re talking about, to be frank,” said Ronald D. Utt, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “To say, O.K., we didn’t get it right with trailers so we’ll move on to something more exotic like prefab housing is a bizarre suggestion.”

There are several proposals that FEMA may try in future disasters, including houses made of shipping containers and one that can be shipped flat and unfolded upon delivery. Here in Gulfport, the state has designed and built what are known as the Mississippi Cottages — skinny but sturdy little houses that can be seen lined up by the hundreds in a staging area here.

But while the cottages are the only alternative that has been fully tested and appear popular with those who live in them, they have proved hard to place because of local government resistance. And they were produced through an effort that FEMA may have a hard time replicating.

FEMA is under increasing pressure from Congress to develop disaster housing. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat who leads a subcommittee on disaster recovery, has begun an investigation into the agency’s policies, and, at a hearing this month, castigated agency officials for failing to develop a strategic plan. Congress had set a deadline for the plan of July 1, 2007; the agency now says it hopes to have one by June 1.

Her goal, Ms. Landrieu said in an e-mail message, is to “make sure the next time a disaster strikes, housing — a basic human need — will be safe for all our families.”

FEMA officials say they are pushing hard to move the last 30,000 families out of temporary housing, most of which is made up of trailers. (There were almost 119,000 trailers in use at the peak.) As the trailers are emptied, they will probably be sold for scrap, said David Garratt, acting assistant administrator for disaster assistance at FEMA.

As for the pace of the hunt for a replacement, “we recognize, to some extent, this is an urgent need,” Mr. Garratt said. “But we don’t want to treat disaster victims as guinea pigs.”

In the meantime, FEMA is planning to order formaldehyde-free mobile homes and a little-used mini-mobile home, called a “park model,” to house disaster victims. But it is far harder to find sites for the bigger units; last fall, for example, the agency had more than 57,000 trailers in use along the Gulf Coast, but fewer than 7,000 mobile homes, and only 1,600 park units.

After the California wildfires last fall, FEMA was able to install only 50 mobile homes; it found them hard to transport on winding roads and hard to install on steep sites, said Jack Schuback, who runs the agency’s joint housing solutions group.

Many experts have long urged FEMA to work closely with federal housing officials to find existing apartments for disaster victims, rather than focus on trailers. The agency insists that it does so whenever possible, although its efforts along those lines in New Orleans and Mississippi have been roundly criticized. But after a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, there was no existing housing nearby.

Relocating families might mean sending them far from their jobs and the houses they hope to rebuild.

One of FEMA’s criteria in evaluating trailer alternatives is that they have a smaller footprint than mobile homes, Mr. Schuback said.

The agency is also looking for housing that can accommodate families and people with disabilities, that can be delivered quickly, that can be installed in different environments, and that will not be too costly. The travel trailers cost as little as $11,000 apiece, but installing and maintaining them averaged $30,000, and sometimes far more, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Using a lengthy checklist, FEMA has evaluated about 66 proposals, Mr. Schuback said, and visited 37 sites. But only half a dozen have been deemed promising enough to try during a disaster.

“I want to emphasize that we have not yet found the golden unit that will solve all disaster housing,” he said. “The process has ruled out far more units than it has yielded.”

The agency is being cagey about which proposals made the cut, but it did say that it is evaluating two that are being tried by states under a $400 million pilot project that Congress required FEMA to undertake in June 2006.

Texas is supposed to try the panelized home. It has signed a contract with an international company called Heston, but none of the houses have been built.

The only units FEMA says it is planning to test are the Mississippi Cottages, which have tin roofs, small porches and are colored like Easter eggs — rose-hip pink, malted mint, cloudless blue. The cottages are on wheels, but the larger models can be put on permanent foundations. All are equipped with appliances, beds, a table and chairs, ceiling fans, even pots and pans, and cost an average of $32,000 apiece to build.

With its built-in closets and spacious kitchen cupboards, their cottage feels like a mansion, said Vicki Ladner Meshell and her husband, Rickey, whose apartment in Long Beach was washed away by Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge.

“We love it — except when all four of us are trying to get ready at once,” Ms. Meshell said of the little aqua-colored cottage, which her family eventually hopes to buy. The cottage is rent-free, although they pay $210 a month for the trailer site, plus utilities.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has installed more than 2,000 of them throughout southern Mississippi, and plans to put in 3,500.

But local governments in Mississippi have resisted the cottages. They fear people who get cottages will simply live in them and not rebuild their houses, said Mike Womack, executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.

“They’re too nice,” he said. “I’ve heard this over and over again.”

Nearly 40,000 Katrina families still in mobile homes

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Almost three years after Hurricane Katrina, nearly 40,000 families still are living in vulnerable mobile homes and trailers across the U.S. Gulf Coast with another hurricane season just two months away, the top U.S. disaster official said on Wednesday.

The number is down from about 100,000 families, or some 300,000 people, in April 2006. At one point following the devastating 2005 hurricane season, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency was housing 143,000 families in mobile homes and trailers.

FEMA Administrator David Paulison said the agency, which was heavily criticized for its hapless response when Katrina swamped New Orleans, is moving about 800 families a week into hotels, motels or apartments.

The families are either living at group sites or in trailers in the driveways of their homes as they rebuild.

The six-month Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1. Forecasters are expecting above-average storm activity.

"As far as rebuilding, I did expect it to take this long," Paulison told a small group of reporters at the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando. "But as far as housing people, I did not foresee that they would be there almost three years later."

Katrina killed 1,500 people and caused $80 billion in damage when it swept ashore in late August 2005 near New Orleans, shattering the levees protecting the low-lying city and swamping entire neighborhoods.

The three worst storms of 2005 -- Katrina, Rita and Wilma -- together caused about $110 billion in damages. The record-shattering season produced 28 tropical storms.

The presence of so many people in the flimsy temporary housing complicates preparations for the hurricane season because those families must be evacuated in the event of a threatening storm.

Paulison said the agency was on target to move everyone from the group sites by June 1 but was having "a lot of trouble" getting some of those displaced by Katrina to move again, even from cramped mobile homes that are often reduced to rubble in big storms.

"People simply don't want to move," he said. "It hasn't been as easy a task to get people out as we thought it might be."

Nagin OKs demolition of Lafitte housing complex

The light-brown bricks of the Lafitte public housing complex will soon be rubble.

Mayor Ray Nagin signed its demolition permit Monday, allowing the destruction of all but 196 units, which are being preserved temporarily for returning public-housing residents.

Shortly after the City Council voted in December to demolish the "Big Four" public housing developments, the mayor signed three of the four permits. Since then backhoes and dumptrucks have been working steadily to pull down and haul away apartment buildings at the B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete and St. Bernard complexes.

But the mayor kept his pen from Lafitte's demolition permit, saying that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development hadn't handed over what he and the City Council had requested. Specifically, as a condition of demolition the mayor and council wanted to see the redevelopers' financing plans, master-development agreements signed by all resident councils, documentation that the Housing Authority of New Orleans had provided enough affordable housing for returning public-housing residents, and an expansion of HANO's current one-man board to include local representation and input.

The mayor had always maintained that he would authorize the Lafitte demolition when HUD provided the necessary paperwork.

Still, preservationists and public-housing advocates held out hope that Lafitte's demolition was being reconsidered. They argued that Lafitte was better designed and maintained than the other complexes being razed and that it was an integral part of the culturally rich 6th Ward.

Those hopes were dashed Monday afternoon after the mayor said that he and council members were "comfortable" that HUD was honoring its wishes.

"We're really disappointed," said Walter Gallas head of the New Orleans field office for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "We believe that the city, HUD, and HANO are making a big mistake."

N.O. housing is still in crisis

While more than 70 percent of New Orleans' displaced public housing residents want to return to the city, most of those surveyed recently by the University of Texas at Arlington said they have no desire to return to New Orleans' public housing complexes.

And there's another striking finding, especially when cast against the backdrop of a raging debate over plans to demolish the city's "Big Four" complexes: More than 80 percent of those families who lived in C.J. Peete, B.W. Cooper, St. Bernard and Lafitte, the developments slated for the wrecking ball, said they now would prefer to live elsewhere.

Among pre-Katrina HANO tenants who say they favor living back in their old apartments, 20 percent of the total -- virtually all of them -- are already doing so, survey results show.

The survey of 2,109 families who lived in Housing Authority of New Orleans complexes before Hurricane Katrina was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency that wants to demolish most buildings in the storm-damaged developments and replace them with a newer model of mixed-income units.

HANO plans to replace 4,500 demolished public housing units with 3,200 public housing units and 1,765 subsidized affordable units, for people at slightly higher income levels.

While the survey seems to validate HUD's strategy for ensuring housing slots for all displaced HANO residents who want to return, Bill Quigley, a lawyer for demolition opponents, said the broader housing needs of low-income families must be addressed.

Competition is fierce

"They're saying 3,200 is enough for the ones who lived in HANO units, but there are many more who lived in other subsidized housing," he said. "The competition for the 1,765 affordable subsidized housing units is 7,000 people," according to an earlier survey by the social action group PolicyLink, he said.

In addition, Quigley said, Katrina's destruction created a new population of needy families who also weren't considered in HUD's survey.

"At the end of the day, you can't then say this is enough housing for them (HUD) to meet their duty under the law, which is to provide enough housing for the community," he said.

The number of survey respondents equaled 41 percent of the 5,146 families who occupied HANO units at the time of Hurricane Katrina.

HUD hailed the survey as highly representative because, in addition to the large sample size, the distribution of respondents' pre-Katrina residences closely mirrored how families were spread among the 10 public housing developments and scattered-site HANO units in New Orleans.

C. Donald Babers, the lone member of the HUD receivership board that runs HANO, said the survey proved that the government's plan to replace traditional public housing with mixed-income complexes and other homes would be sufficient to meet the needs of those who want to come back. He said that flew in the face of housing advocates' demands for a one-for-one replacement of the traditional complexes.

It also could be used to counter arguments by housing advocates and even two United Nations experts that HUD's demolition plans discriminated against black people and violated international human rights law.

'Ready to move'

The HUD survey results were announced just hours before a U.N. panel, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, was scheduled to rule on whether the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina had violated an international anti-racism treaty, but Babers said the timing was purely coincidental.

If the preferences expressed by the survey respondents were to bear out for all 5,146 affected families, about 1,800 will want to return to HANO facilities and 1,900 would prefer obtaining Section 8 vouchers for private apartments in New Orleans. Public housing residents and advocates generally accepted the survey results as highly indicative of the desires of the displaced, some representatives said.

"It's true, a lot of people were ready to move and wanted to get Section 8 vouchers even before the storm," said Cynthia Wiggins, a current resident of the Guste complex who was part of a residents group that helped formulate the survey questions and track down the displaced. "There's no doubt in my mind that is the case."

Responses to some questions may be affected by what residents knew about plans for their old neighborhoods. Former residents may have been aware that their old apartments were scheduled for demolition, or that they are already gone. Also, Quigley said the question of whether people want to return to their old apartments doesn't make clear that renovating the old units would make them better.

The University of Texas at Arlington researchers and a contracted survey team from Survey Communications Inc. of Baton Rouge developed the survey questions in consultation with HUD and resident leaders, with input from critics of HUD's plans, such as U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and housing activists.

Don't know about benefit

The survey included former housing complex residents who are now scattered around the country, but half of the respondents are back in New Orleans, either living in restored HANO units or in private apartments on HUD vouchers.

The survey also probed still-displaced residents' reasons for not coming home, and exposed a weakness in HUD's relocation efforts. Nearly 80 percent of those outside New Orleans who want to return said they wanted to be back home within the next six months, but the vast majority of that group said their return would be delayed by a lack of transportation or by moving expenses.

Babers said it was disheartening to see the persistence of such perceived barriers when HUD has a contract with U-Haul to pay for travel and moving expenses of returning families. He said HUD needs to do a better job of advertising and explaining the program.