New Orleans: FEMA trailers must go

NEW ORLEANS, July 14 (UPI) -- New Orleans officials say they are getting ready to enforce an ordinance demanding that residents vacate Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers.

Citing a missed July 1 deadline, city inspectors said they are set to hand out warnings and violations notices to residents of the nearly 4,000 trailers in use in New Orleans, USA Today reported Monday.

The trailers, distributed to flooded-out residents in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, were meant as a temporary housing fix. Most are in yards of homes undergoing repairs.

Three years later, however, city and FEMA officials say it's time for the trailers to go, mainly because they are vulnerable to hurricanes, the newspaper said.

"We're in our third hurricane season and these units were never meant to be lived in this long," FEMA spokesman Andrew Thomas told USA Today.

Flood victim advocates say enforcing the deadline for trailer removal will cause a crises, contending the people remaining in them are mostly "challenging cases" such as disabled, low-income or unemployed residents.