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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Ind. Econ. Dev. - Trailers flow from Indiana to Gulf Coast

"Trailers flow from Indiana to Gulf Coast: U.S. shelling out millions to shelter 600,000 victims" is the headline to an interesting story today in the Chicago Tribune. It begins:

ELKHART, Ind. -- Four hundred squat white trailers sat on train cars in the Norfolk Southern rail yard Tuesday, waiting for the long trip to the Gulf of Mexico. In Nappanee, 15 miles away, 200 or more are produced each day.

This is what $521 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency contracts looks like: Gulf Stream Coach Inc.'s bare bones Cavalier trailers. * * * Demand couldn't be greater.

"As fast as we can put them on there, they're moving them down there," said Gulf Stream marketing director Steven Lidy, watching the company's trailers being hitched for the ride to the rail yard Tuesday.

The giant award to Gulf Stream for 50,000 housing units is part of unprecedented federal spending to answer one of the basic needs caused by the hurricane disasters of Katrina and Rita: providing an estimated 600,000 displaced people with housing.

The trailers are emblematic of the scale and scope of the federal effort in the region. The spending is a window into the urgent, sometimes haphazard contracting process, much of it done with little or no competitive bidding, like Gulf Stream's contract.

In the nearly one month since Katrina hit Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the federal government has passed out billions of dollars in contracts. At least $1.15 billion of that money has gone toward travel trailers and mobile homes, which are destined for new, temporary towns throughout the Gulf Coast region.

The piece concludes:
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) worries that FEMA hasn't thought through the implications of concentrating large numbers of evacuees in cramped housing.

"I have a lot of concerns ... I'm not sure FEMA has a coherent plan," Collins said. "I'm not sure that cities of manufactured housing are the answer."

Bob Hebert, director of recovery services in Charlotte County, Fla., has seen the problems created by housing people in trailer parks after a hurricane. While he describes the trailers as a "lifesaver" for evacuees immediately after the storm, he said they can quickly turn into a nightmare if there are too many of them and they are isolated from the community.

"The first three or four months, it's an adventure," Hebert said. "But you quickly become an entitlement community. . . . There needs to be a plan to break it down very quickly."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 28, 2005 07:59 AM
Posted to Indiana economic development