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FEMA homes in Hope: Symbol of failure
Monday, January 1, 2007 12:58 PM CST

A group of FEMA mobile homes leaves the staging area in Hope, Ark., Feb. 23, 2006, heading for Louisiana for victims of Hurricane Katrina. This was the second day in which around 30 homes were transported. Staff photo by Aaron Street

By Aaron Brand
Texarkana Gazette

Who would have thought emergency housing sitting at an airport in Hope, Ark., would become a stark symbol of government failure in the wake of Hurricane Katrina?

Photographs of a sea of Federal Emergency Management Agency mobile homes were printed and broadcast by local and national media as thousands of homes sat in Hope all year despite original plans to use them for hurricane survivors along the Gulf Coast.

Their use, or lack of use, became fodder for an investigation into the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. In April, a U.S. Senate committee held hearings in Hope as part of a Senate investigation.

FEMA officials said flood plain regulations were among reasons mobile homes were not widely used along the Gulf Coast in the months following hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Some mobile homes were sent to the Gulf Coast, while others were eventually sent to Arkansas and Missouri to help tornado victims, and some were dispatched to Oklahoma to help tornado and wildfire victims.

As of late December, about 8,300 mobile homes were stored at the Hope Municipal Airport with about 1,100 stored at Red River Army Depot near Texarkana.

Now added to the Hope airport site are thousands of travel trailers. The Hope site is being put to use as a repair center for travel trailers that were used along the Gulf Coast.

The airport is receiving $25,000 a month as a staging area for the mobile homes and travel trailers, and some local residents have found jobs at the site.

U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., was among those pushing for legislation to get the mobile homes in the hands of people who can use them.

Legislation that was part of a Homeland Security bill passed in September would allow FEMA to donate or sell the mobile homes to localities or nonprofit organizations, as well as release them to Indian tribes for housing homeless citizens and under-housed families.

Legislation that was part of a Homeland Security bill passed in September would allow FEMA to donate or sell the mobile homes to localities or nonprofit organizations, as well as release them to Indian tribes for housing homeless citizens and under-housed families.

By early December, the Arkansas Federal Surplus Property Program had received requests from 80 agencies to use the mobile homes.

Among the applicants for use of the mobile homes was the Southwest Arkansas Domestic Violence Center in De Queen, but by late December the organization had not received notice whether the organization could use them.

The Southwest Arkansas Domestic Violence Center would like to use mobile homes as transitional housing.

More than a year after hurricanes ravaged the Gulf Coast, little has changed at the sites where mobile homes still sit.