Harry Langston is frustrated, but not just about the latest hotel deadline handed down by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"I've applied for everything," said Langston when asked if he has applied for a hotel authorization code to stay beyond the Feb. 7 deadline set for the FEMA hotel subsidy program.
Langston has been living at Plantation Inn in Shreveport for almost three months and has finally decided to find an apartment after giving up on receiving a FEMA temporary housing unit.
"It's all the calling and nobody seems to know anything about the trailers. Whether FEMA helps me or not, it wouldn't matter. I'd do OK, but some of these people are scared of change. They've never been anywhere else in their life and they don't know where to look."
Today is the last day for evacuees to call the agency to request an authorization code in order to extend their hotel stays beyond Feb. 7. Without the code, FEMA stops paying. With the code, FEMA will pay for hotel rooms at least until Feb. 13.
That date could be further extended for evacuees whose temporary housing assistance applications are pending.
FEMA reports it has evacuees in 26,885 rooms in 3,157 hotels throughout the nation. In Louisiana, the agency is paying for 10,517 rooms in 488 hotels. And in the Shreveport-Bossier City area, Centerpoint, a local referral agency which operates the 2-1-1 social service referral call center, has reported there are 1,248 evacuees in 316 rooms.
In the five months since hurricanes Katrina and Rita displaced more than 400,000 individuals in Louisiana, FEMA has paid or reimbursed more than $325 million for hotel and motel rooms for those without housing.
Meanwhile, it's revealed that FEMA has over 10,000 trailers on hand in Hope, Arkansas (President Clinton's home town) that are going empty! From the LA Times.
At Uncle Henry's Smokehouse Bar B Que in Hope, Ark., the lunchtime crowd filled every table Thursday — all 10 of them. At City Hall, the phones were ringing off the hook. And out at the airport, a private pilot who just turned 45 said she didn't expect to live long enough to see things get back to normal.
All because of the latest example of how federal, state and local officials have responded to Hurricane Katrina. Time was, Hope was known primarily as the childhood home of President Clinton. Now it's Trailer Town, USA.
After the Aug. 29 storm left thousands homeless on the Gulf Coast, officials in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama began calling for trailers to provide temporary shelter. More than 100,000 were requested, and somebody decided to create holding areas for the trailers outside the hurricane zone.
Today, legions of wide-bodied mobile homes sit empty at Hope's Municipal Airport, a sprawling former military base. After all these months, storm victims can't seem to get the trailers, which are proving a mixed blessing to Hope and Arkansas.
"It just boggles the mind in this day and time," said Mark Keith, director of the Hope-Hempstead County Chamber of Commerce. "There are 10,770 trailers at Hope Airport. That's one for every man, woman and child in Hope, with a few left over to send to Emmet, down the road."
Is this not insane? Is this not completely callous and incompetent to have availabe resources - 10,000 trailers available as temporary housing, yet we've spent $325 Million dollars on hotels and then dumped 14,00 families on the street while completely failing to get any real traction on rebuilding New Orleans even six-months after the fact?
Vyan
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