TEXAN PUSHES FOR CAMERON, LA HOUSING
BY JOHN GUIDROZ
AMERICAN PRESS
LAKE CHARLES, LA
JANUARY 25, 2009

At least 500 Cameron Parish residents whose homes were ravaged by Hurricane Ike are in need of temporary emergency housing, according to a Texas businessman.

Mike Turner is the founder and director of the Silver Lining Foundation based in Austin, Texas, and owner of the Country Aire Mobile Home Park at 2465 La. 397.

Turner said he met with a Federal Emergency Management Agency official on Friday after the agency denied emergency housing assistance to nearly 500 Cameron residents.

The denials were announced after FEMA issued a temporary waiver on Jan. 7 that allowed emergency housing in lower Cameron Parish until June 1.

Before the waiver, preliminary flood maps put more than 80 percent of the parish in a high-risk flood zone, or V zone. FEMA officials said they would not issue temporary homes for residents in such areas.

Immediately after the storm, Turner said, nearly 1,000 Cameron residents registered with the Cameron Long Term Recovery Group in hopes of getting a temporary residence from FEMA. About half of those people have "given up and moved elsewhere" because of a lack of assistance from the agency, he said.

"They’ve made due by themselves, and they don’t want the runaround anymore," he said.

After the waiver was issued, the residents who registered with the recovery group were asked to contact FEMA about getting a mobile home placed on their properties.

"Of the 500 that called, one was approved," he said.

Turner said FEMA’s reasons for denying assistance were invalid in some cases.

"(FEMA) is telling people, ‘You have insurance, so you’re not eligible,’ " he said. "Insurance has nothing to do with it, and it’s not a FEMA criteria for providing disaster housing."

FEMA spokesman Andrew Thomas said the agency will work to "reexamine all the applicants that have been denied." "If any of them are eligible for housing, then they will receive the housing," he said. During the meeting, Turner said, he laid out two goals he would like to see the Silver Lining Foundation and FEMA accomplish:

1) Open a Disaster Recovery Center at 8 a.m. Monday, Jan. 26, in Lake Charles.

2) Provide emergency housing for every Cameron resident in no more than three weeks.

Turner said he would provide two or three of his own travel trailers to set up the DRC and would pay for electricity, phone and hotel rooms for FEMA workers.

Turner said nearly 15 Cameron families have been provided with FEMA mobile homes and have moved into the Country Aire park.

He said the effort has been a struggle since it began last December, when more than 50 people registered to move into the park.

"I still have another dozen on my list who are waiting for a mobile home," he said. "The rest of them gave up and went elsewhere because FEMA didn’t provide the disaster housing they were eligible for."

Another issue, Turner said, is "an excess inventory" of FEMA mobile homes in staging areas, including the one in DeRidder.

"FEMA has 144,000 trailers across the Gulf Coast, tens of thousands of which are brand new," he said.

Turner said he has sent repeated requests to FEMA to either donate the trailers or sell them.

"They just won’t do it," he said.

Thomas said one reason that FEMA may be reluctant to sell the travel trailers to Turner is because of health issues related to them.

"We’re only using what is referred to as a park model, which is not a travel trailer," he said.

Turner said he provided money to a hurricane victim to buy 20 used travel trailers, which the Silver Lining Foundation will rehab and donate to other storm victims.

Of the 20 trailers, he said, they plan to give away as many as 14. Two trailers were donated to Cameron residents on Thursday.


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