FEMA to make "Trailer Cities" to house displaced

GrafwritahGrafwritah 4,184 Posts
edited September 2005 in Strut Central
From the article Dozens Found Dead at New Orleans HospitalBy ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer---[i]FEMA already expects to be providing temporary housing for some 200,000 hurricane victims for up to five years, most of them in Louisiana. It plans to use trailer homes to create "temporary cities," some with populations up to 25,000, said Brad Fair, head of the FEMA housing effort./I>----Does this make any sense?Why crowd them all together?25,000 displaced people in trailers crammed in one place?WHAT ARE YOU THINKING.WHAT.SERIOUSLY.BAD IDEA. REALLY.http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/hstaa432/lesson_19/hooverville75.jpg" alt="" />http://www.wjcc.k12.va.us/jhs/Curriculum/Hoover/PHOTOS/Mvc-008f.jpg" alt="" />Can someone say, "scattered site?"

  Comments


  • SoulOnIceSoulOnIce 13,027 Posts
    Yes, it is pretty easy to picture some endless, barren dusty flatland - patrolled by Military Police with automatic rifles, living standards way below acceptable. Scary shit.

  • Welcome to Trenchtown , Lousiana , population. ????



  • I dunno... When My state had a bad flood in '97, we all got trailers to live in. Really fucking little ones too. Everyone did. I think bigger families got bigger trailers.

    Best job of my life was a secuirty gaurd after the flood. The college dorms were used to house the displaced, and I got to sit there for hours reading books and shit. Hired private security. Lotta the guys were licensed to carry a side-arm. One dude in particular was really gung-ho, and used to carry some shit for hog-tieing people, handcuffs, stun gun... and was always reading catalogues trying to pick out body armor. What a sucker. I was like, man, these people are fucking flood victims, get real.

    Also, I gaurded the yard where all the empty trailers were kept. Fun as hell. Me and a dude named Ahmed would work the night shift... Playing N64 and reading, and occasionally walking around the yard freaking each other out, all for like 15 bucks an hour... Good times...

    But yeah, me and my mom's trailer was pretty shit... And those bathrooms fucking stink. But what can you do, realistically.

    On a side-note... The flood was great in many ways. THe city decided not to rebuild in the flood plane, and everyone who lived there, or even rented, got a nice chunk of money. I fucked up, and moved out of my house a little early, another guy moved in after me, and about a month later, they stated those houses were all condemned, and everyone would get paid. I was pissed.

    Peace...
    FNM

  • I would identify underpopulated areas and send them there. Places with existing buildings that could be easily renovated. Then people could live in real buildings in places that need an influx of real live people anyway.

    Detroit
    Cleveland
    Buffalo
    Cincinnati
    Atlanta (city)
    Camden, NJ
    Youngstown, OH (x5000!)
    East St. Louis, IL



    Plenty of places for people. Why put up shantytowns full of trailers? Especially with many people relocated from housing projects? Bad idea.

  • dont forget all of the military bases we are closing due to the changing face of the war on terror. despite our record military spending we are forced to close bases on our own land all while opening new ones else where. (side rant: rummy's idea army is a small force. we can't get rich paying our own soldiers, we have to hire them into private companies, pay the private companies 10x what we would pay our boys, scrape a little off the top of that and retire drinking the blood of other parents children.) sorry for that... anyways these bases are... could we say modern day ghost towns? housing, offices, classrooms, and retail space all packed onto one site. seems like the only way to displace an entire city in any sort of reasonable timeframe.

  • one of the stories from last weeks This American Life has a story about what its like to live in one of those 'trailer cities' in flordia

    http://www.thislife.org/ra/296.ram

    the whole hour is really good

  • I would identify underpopulated areas and send them there. Places with existing buildings that could be easily renovated. Then people could live in real buildings in places that need an influx of real live people anyway.

    Detroit
    Cleveland
    Buffalo
    Cincinnati
    Atlanta (city)
    Camden, NJ
    Youngstown, OH (x5000!)
    East St. Louis, IL



    Plenty of places for people. Why put up shantytowns full of trailers? Especially with many people relocated from housing projects? Bad idea.


    Cleveland and Cincinnati are not underpopulated. I would not send anyone to live in Cincinnati as a refuge anyway. The racial tension there is just as fucked up as NO or more so and on top of that its the most conservative city you will ever be in.

    I don't think Youngstown would be able to support the displaced population, they have lost a ton of jobs there.

  • Cleveland and Cincinnati are not underpopulated. I would not send anyone to live in Cincinnati as a refuge anyway. The racial tension there is just as fucked up as NO or more so and on top of that its the most conservative city you will ever be in.

    ?????

    Have you been?

    Cleveland city limits had a peak population of about 950,000 in 1950. 2000 pop was something like 500,000.


    Admittedly, a lot of it has been plowed under, but there are plenty of vacant structures in various capacities. Cleveland (city) is definitely on the decline even after all this time.

    I don't think Youngstown would be able to support the displaced population, they have lost a ton of jobs there.

    I agree.

    But if you think about it, all the employers are destroyed too.

    Do you think Baton Rouge has a spare 100,000 jobs just waiting for people?

    Nah.

    I think military base idea was best, but still, my point was more of the lack of necessity to jam people all up together and build little temporary housing for them. Spread them out across different places to minimize the impact on any one city.
    And like I said, there are plenty of underutilized housing facilities in cities across the US, I'm sure the government could make use of those instead of wrecking someplace new to create a temporary housing dump.

  • the base idea seems like a good one. I think trailers are ok too though.
    Places with existing buildings that could be easily renovated.
    This right here would take so much longer and be so much more complicated than just running power and water to a pre-fab trailer as to make it totaly out of the question. There are so many steps needed to bring an abandoned building back to habitable condition it would take years. The trailer thing is working of an assembly line type idea, roll out trailer, hook up power (extension cords off of centalized poles) and water (probably just a garden hose hook up). Very small amount of specific skills that you could proabaly train a crew of anybody to set up in like a day. Renovating a buliding however would take highly skilled people who were also required to asses many of different problems on the spot and make decisions.

  • Well you're assuming you're starting from scratch. I know around here there are lots of low occupancy commercial/residential structures that aren't abandoned at all.


    But yeah, you're right. It would probably take more time.

  • SwayzeSwayze 14,705 Posts
    Welcome to Trenchtown , Lousiana , population. ????



    if history is any indication this should make for some fucking classic music.

  • Welcome to Trenchtown , Lousiana , population. ????



    if history is any indication this should make for some fucking classic music.

    As far as history goes New Orleans has always made classic music.
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