NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- With thousands of displaced New Orleans residents still waiting for temporary housing, FEMA now plans to rent vacant apartments for them.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency generally uses small trailers, not existing houses or apartments. But USA Today reports that officials have decided that the scale of the Hurricane Katrina disaster justifies bending the rules. About 20,000 people are expected to get apartments with FEMA paying the rent for 18 months.
"We had a dilemma down here," Lee Champagne, the deputy federal coordinating officer for Katrina and Rita, said. "We are placing about 500 trailers a day, but at that rate, we will have housed only half the eligible families by March."
The trailer program also is under fire because of reports that installing each one, maintaining it for 18 months and removing it costs $58,000, or more than $3,000 a month. Critics say that those made homeless by the hurricane would be better served at lower cost if FEMA simply allowed them to find houses or apartments and then paid the rent.
New Orleans boosters like the apartment plan because it also gives owners of apartment buildings an incentive to speed up repairs.
