FEMA’s deadline to close trailer parks leaves many hopeless

Nearly three years after the Hurricane Katrina made thousands of victims, leaving thousands others without houses, the Federal Emergency Management Agency succeeded to meet its deadline and close all six trailer parks by Sunday, but said it would still take a few more days to move everyone into apartments or motels.

The decision to close the parks came after an investigation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between Dec. 21 and Jan. 23 found that formaldehyde fumes from hundreds of trailers and mobile homes were on average about five times what people are exposed to in most modern homes.

Formaldehyde is a common preservative and embalming fluid and a chemical used in the manufacture of the trailers. It can cause respiratory problems such as bronchitis and is known to cause cancer. In fact, formaldehyde has been classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Following this investigation, the FEMA established May 31 (a day before the start of the hurricane season) as deadline for closing the parks. However, many people have shown concern about where they will live and how they will be able to pay their rents. The FEMA has been under fire for its decision to empty the parks before they have found permanent housing. Also, there are many people who cannot afford a place to stay given the high prices after Katrina stroke New Orleans in 2005.

While some of the people that have lived in the FEMA trailer parks will benefit of housing subsidies until March 2009, those of them who can’t prove where they lived before Katrina destroyed their homes will benefit of the aid for another month only. After that, they’re on their own.

“I’m under more stress now than in the hurricane. They don't even do me the courtesy of responding. It's just, ‘When are you going to leave? When are you going to leave?’ They don't seem to care where we end up,” Ghulam Nasim, 79, a retired doctor who packed his things, but remained in his trailer said, according to the LA Times. And like him are many other residents who lack alternatives.

By Saturday, a day before the deadline, the former largest FEMA trailer park, Renaissance Village, had only 40 still occupied trailers out of the 575 that housed the Katrina victims until a few days ago.