Friday, November 9, 2012

FEMA trailers ready to house homeless

From Crains:

The federal government is moving manufactured housing into areas in New York and New Jersey that were hit hardest by Superstorm Sandy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday.

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said the disaster relief agency has several hundred mobile homes in its inventory of emergency supplies and has started moving some of them to disaster zone. He said it is unclear yet if FEMA will need to order more of the temporary homes.

He told reporters Thursday that officials still don't know "what total demand would be."

Since the storm hit last week, more than 317,000 people have registered with FEMA for financial help and the agency has approved more than $300 million in emergency aid. In New York and New Jersey, FEMA has determined that more than 101,000 people are eligible for temporary housing at hotels or motels in the region but it's unclear exactly how many people are taking advantage of that option.

More than 56,000 people have also been ruled eligible for FEMA's individual and households program, which provides money for renting a new place or housing repairs.

Mr. Fugate said some people who have been forced out of their homes have sought shelter at hotels as far away as Albany.

2 comments:

The Huge Disconnect said...

http://news.yahoo.com/sandy-inspires-first-doctors-without-borders-u-relief-034805890.html

For the first time, Doctors Without Borders is in the United States.

Telling comment:
I don't think any of us expected to see this level of lacking access to healthcare."

I think the thing that gets people is how most of our city is invisible. The suffering is real, its felt by 100,000s and all they can do is talk about what a great victory the Democratic Party has at the polls.

We get all these emails on how [name your business segment here] is coming back to life, how [name your ethnic group here] has a bright future, and how [name your sexual thing here] is now brought into the tent and finally how [name the mayor's waterfront development project] will come roaring back on the front burner.

Meanwhile everyone I talk to said 'there is no purpose in voting' and 'there is no point in reading the papers or following politics.'

We are invisible people. They do not come out the the disaster area because they don't want to talk to us, see the mess they created, in short, deal with it.

Their message: Blame Con Ed. Next question.

The real message: They do not care about us. We are shit.

The public is sullen and apathetic.

Never in our city's history has our leadership been so detached and aloof.

This situation is very volatile.

Anonymous said...

i do hope that people get these FEMA trailers -- not like what happened with hurricane katrina -- they are still sitting there empty