Challenging a Well-Studied and Thoughtful Policy Discussion
Two weeks or so ago, on March 28, 2008, I sent an email message to Stacy Head. This was about the time that Eli Ackerman posted his article A Poor Choice of Words and a Shameful Worldview on Think New Orleans about the FEMA trailer campaign.
Stacy or Staff
Anyone put out any clarification on the quote from yesterday’s Times-Picayune?
“At what point are we going to say New Orleans is not a place where you can live in a trailer as a lifestyle choice?” she said.
Curious.
Alan
The weekend passed and I got this response on April 2nd.
The quote was accurate. There are people who should have moved out of trailers by now who have not. There are trailers being RENTED on Freret Street as we speak. Frankly, I find that disgusting. What kind of a cretin takes a FREE FEMA trailer and RENTS IT to someone. If you have a friend or relative that needs housing, let them use it for FREE! Attack that kind of behavior rather than challenge well-studied and thoughtful policy discussion! As was made very clear (if anyone listened), the council wants to assure that people who are in trailers because of Road Home delays, insurance issues, construction nightmares and the like have time to resolve their issues. We also made it clear that we are urging FEMA and churches and non-profits to help those people resolve their issues.
Stacy Head
Councilmember, District B
I’m told that there are some pretty disastrous FEMA trailers in Carrollton and Riverbend. I’m now even more curious about the “well-studied and thoughtful policy discussion” that has informed the decisions about the FEMA trailers.
What concerns me though, it that the city seems be defining a new process, along the lines of the demolition list, where FEMA trailer inhabitants have the burden of proof, where they must justify their FEMA trailer need. City Hall has not had the capacity to handle these appeals.
Shouldn’t the enforcement of FEMA trailer eligibility be the responsibility of FEMA itself?
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Under normal circumstances placing a trailer in your front yard to live in would be against the law. After Katrina the city had to ignore that ordinance for a period of time to allow fema to place trailers on people’s property.
Now over 2 1/2 years after the storm the vast majority of people are out of their trailers, and the city is rightfully requiring people who are still living in a trailer in front of their property to show a real need for it.
It is hard to rebuild a neighborhood when there are a bunch of trailers still lining the street.
My wife and I were among the first residents on our block able to live in our own home. Ours is a fully-raised house in a neighborhood of homes built on 2-foot piers. Our main floor was JUST above the waterline while our neighbors’ homes took water up to the windowsills. Even so, we needed all new plumbing and wiring, we had to wait for insurance money and then wait for licensed trandesmen, and so we were not able to reinhabit our home until 14 months after the flood.
So, to us, a streeetscape featuring trailers in front of nearly half the homes has become familiar and unremarkable, and a reminder that things are not yet back to normal.
And things are very truly NOT back to normal, even for many of us who are able to live in real houses and not trailers.
About half of the trailers formerly found on our block are gone now. One of the remaining trailers is inhabited by an elderly woman who seems to have no plan and no means of making any progress at all. She owns her property outright ~ a plot of land and a ruined house ~ and I, for one, do NOT begrudge her the right to live on that property however she can manage, even until the last of her few remaining days, if necessary.
The other remaining trailers are in front of houses that appear to be more-or-less renovated (at least, on the outside). In one of these cases, the family is still housing a couple of relatives who lost their homes, in addition to the immediate family who lived there before the storm; I’m sure they need the extra couple of beds and the extra bath. I don’t know the other family with a trailer as well, but I see people going in and out of the trailer as well as the house pretty regularly, and as long as they need this arrangement, I have no problem with them.
Matthew says “It is hard to rebuild a neighborhood when there are a bunch of trailers still lining the street.” I had no trouble working on my house while trailers lined my street. Well, I had a bit of trouble, but nothing I could blame on my less fortunate neoighbors.
All due respect to Ms Head, but her attitude seems to me to be characteristic of the “isle of denial” in unflooded uptown. Her district may include the low-lying and long-poverty-stricken neighborhoods on either side of Freret Street, but her heart and mind are with the more fortunate denizens of the sliver by the river.
My feeling is that these folks have a lot of gall to even suggest that ANYONE would stay in a trailer if they had any real choice in the matter.
It may be true that some folks are making ends meet by renting out trailer space, but to suggest that such catch-as-catch-can entrepreneurship is CHARACTERISTIC of our city’s flood victims is downright hateful. This attitude is exactly the same as that of politicians who campaign against poor people by characterizing all recipients of public support as Cadillac-driving “welfare queens.”
It’s true that sooner or later, we’d all like to have everything get back to normal. But that time has not yet arrived. In the meanwhile, public policy should be to help and advocate for every citizen who remains down on their luck. A policy based on the feeling “get these poor people out of my sight” is entirely inappropriate.
OK…You are aware, I’m sure, that Head was quoted at the time of the proposal as saying that the ordinance would NOT apply to anyone who was living in their trailer while still working toward making their house livable, right? If you’ve already gotten your certificate of occupancy for your home, and are back living in it, but still have the trailer sitting in your front yard, then you’re essentially going past the agreement you signed with FEMA when you were leased into the trailer in the first place. The agreement being that FEMA would provide, free of charge, an “emergency living unit” for you until such time as you can make other more permanent living arrangements…such as getting your house ready for actual occupancy.
I’m in a hard hit neighborhood in Gentilly. At one time there were trailers lining both sides of my block. At first they were a sign of progress; a trailer meant someone intended on coming home eventually. Two and a half years later, I’m pretty sure there’s only one trailer left on the block. The family there is slowly renovating their home on their own, and Head’s proposal would have had no effect on them at all. On the next block there are two houses with trailers in front of them which are quite different situations. One was lived in for a few months by the homeowner’s family, but has essentially been left locked up and abandoned for about a year and a half now as the family has pretty much decided to not make a decision about doing anything to the house any time soon. The other trailer was delivered, setup, had power run to it…and then never lived in. Once again, the homeowner either can’t decide what to do with the house, or has decided not to do anything. Neither trailer seems to have been touched in over a year. These are the trailers at which Head’s proposal was targeted.
As an aside…conciously editing someone’s statements such that they make perfect fodder for righteous indignation because one disagrees with them politically is something I would qualify as “hateful”.
Puddinhead
I didn’t edit Stacy’s comments. I merely pulled a quote from the Times-Picayune. I don’t know if I disagree with Stacy politically. I’m just curious as to the statement. To my mind, Stacy gave me a satisfactory answer to what she meant, but I’m still concerned about the process to evict people from the trailers. You’ve said “The family there is slowly renovating their home on their own, and Head’s proposal would have had no effect on them at all.” Are you sure? The way matters are handled at City Hall, I wouldn’t be surprised if this created a new fight for every one who is still slowly renovating from a FEMA trailer. The City Council can never specify how an ordinance is going to be implemented, or it it will be implemented.
That said, I don’t suspect that much will come of the proposal from the city.
If anyone seriously believes the current crowd in charge at City Hall is remotely capable of enforcing the proposed trailer ordinance with any semblance of fairness or intelligence, I submit this message, which appeared today on the “Gentilly_After_Katrina” email forum.
The subject under discussion is the recent outbreak of “housing violation” enforcement:
………….
What a joke!!!!
I was one of the persons that was notified for cutting my grass —Firstly– — I have two Road Home Properties on both sides of me with the grass so high it’s unbelievable! !!
Secondly, my property was seen on 3/10/08. The letter was postmarked to me on 3/28/08. I received it on 3/29/08. My deadline was 4/1/08 to rectify. What a joke——-
Then the typical thing of this city is that they put a number to call and a fax number on the City Letterhead with the Inspector’s name if you have questions. So I called immediately to ask what some of the things on the letter meant and lo and behold both numbers have been disconnected! !!!!!!
Does anyone have a number to contact these idiots!!!
The potential pratfalls of Stacy Head’s policy go beyond the fact that the city has no proven itself to be remotely capable of handling of running a bureaucracy. (You don’t have to search far and wide to find rampant evidence of what I mean by that)
Certainly, if a FEMA trailer eviction deadline was passed municipally, a major concern would be whether or not the city could even process the various rebuilding exemptions that Councilwoman Head says would be included.
But I’ve tried to bring up another foundational problem with the proposal.
In the original Times-Pic article that included the “lifestyle choice comment,” the Councilwoman estimates that 30 percent of the FEMA trailers in the city are being rented out illegally. Even if her proposed deadline was administered to perfection with no improper evictions, her plan is to still evict all of those illegally renting trailers. That would effectively render as many six or seven thousand people homeless.
(My math is that there are around 7,200 FEMA trailers in Orleans Parish, around 2,400 of which [according to Stacy Head] are being rented illegally. 2,400 trailers times a conservative estimate of 2-3 people per trailer equals north of six thousand on the streets)
The reason that six thousand people have been reduced to illegally renting FEMA trailers is that there is an affordable housing crisis. The private housing market is simply not providing enough cheap places for individuals and families to live. There is a DEMAND that owners of FEMA trailers are willing to meet by SUPPLYing illegal rentals.
That is what is so offensive to me about the Councilwoman’s original comments. The assertion that people are choosing to live in cramped, formaldehyde contaminated trailers totally ignores the affordable housing crisis that remains this city’s most pressing social issue.
If the Councilwoman would like to see this city devoid of FEMA trailers, perhaps she should not be so hostile toward plans that would actually do something to alleviate the affordable housing crisis – like the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act – which only she and Senator Vitter opposed out of the whole Louisiana congressional delegation and New Orleans City Council.
Furthermore, I find it disturbing that Stacy Head would respond to thoughtful critiques of her policies by calling on people to stop questioning her policies. I’d appreciate leadership that encourages thoughtful discourse on matters of substance.