http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20110928/NEWS02/709289932
FEMA housing units headed to Vermont
‘Superstructures’ may be needed for winter
By Peter Hirschfeld
Vermont Press Bureau - Published: September 28, 2011
MONTPELIER — Displaced flood victims unable to find permanent shelters before winter could end up in mobile housing units provided by FEMA, state officials said Tuesday.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has already delivered 10 “park unit mobile homes” to a staging area in Springfield. Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Miller says additional units are at the ready if newly homeless residents cannot secure suitable shelter in advance of the cold season.
“We’ll use these as essentially the last resort,” Miller says. “We’d much prefer to find more traditional rental housing. But this could be a very good solution for some Vermonters.”
Miller says it’s too early to know how many, if any, of the units will be used for housing; none of the units is occupied yet.
FEMA trailers became a cultural symbol of bureaucratic incompetence in the months after Hurricane Katrina, when high level of formaldehyde emitting from the trailers were blamed for health problems among occupants.
Miller says the units being used in Vermont are of a different sort than the ones that housed Katrina victims.
“I thought of course about what I know about the FEMA trailers that were deployed after Katrina and the formaldehyde issues,” Miller says. “The first thing we did when looking at whether or not these units were something we’d want to consider is if are they different from those, and they are. It’s a completely new design, new materials.”
Miller says an ad hoc housing commission — made up of federal and state officials as well as representatives from state housing organizations — approved the use of FEMA trailers after an analysis revealed shortages of available housing stock for residents displaced by the late-August floods.
About 2,000 homes were either destroyed or severely damaged in the tropical-storm flooding.
“We got the sense that there is not enough rental housing in all parts of the state for people to be resettled for the winter,” Miller says. “And we decided it was only prudent to make sure FEMA had all the tools available to it to help Vermonters get housed.”
Miller says the mobile homes aren’t ideally suited for northern climes.
“They’ll need skirting, insulation on pipes and sewer, heat tape on some of the utilities in the crawl space,” he says.
Because the units aren’t rated for the snow loads in parts of the state, crews may also have to erect “superstructures” — something akin to a portable carport — to protect the mobile homes against the weight of snow and frozen precipitation.
Sarah Carpenter, executive director of the Vermont Housing Finance Agency and a member of the emergency-housing commission, says members of the group needed to act now if they wanted to ensure the availability of FEMA units later.
“We really wanted to keep that option open,” she says.
Carpenter says FEMA housing isn’t a top option for anyone. But housing stock in more remote communities, she says, may not be sufficient to house the families made homeless by the storm.
“You have families that want to be near friends, families, to keep their kids near their schools,” Carpenter says. “For some people, this could be a workable solution.”
Carpenter says she’s been told by FEMA officials that the units are safe for habitation.
“Not having personally seen them, I can’t vouch for that,” she says. “Somebody from state of Vermont will have to look at them I think to make sure they do meet the criteria for safe housing.”
Miller says his primary concern is ensuring that all Vermonters have a safe place to live during this state’s harsh winter months.
“I’ve seen a lot of people set up in campers,” he says. “That’s great now. But as it gets colder, it’s just not going to work anymore.”
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