FEMA looks at alternatives to polluted trailers

The federal Joint Housing Solutions Group announced in late February that it will evaluate “Gulf Coast-type cottages with front porches” for possible use as disaster housing. Ann Daigle, a new urbanist planner who has been involved in housing efforts for hurricane-damaged sections of Mississippi and Louisiana, said the decision, announced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), “represents a paradigm change.” The Joint Housing Solutions Group was established by FEMA in June 2006. Since then, it has evaluated 40 types of units across the country that could be used as alternatives to trailers and mobile homes. The issue became more urgent early this year when testing found high levels of formaldehyde gas in FEMA-provided trailers and mobile homes in Mississippi and Louisiana. Long-term exposure to formaldehyde, at the rate found in those units, has been linked to an increased risk of cancer. The federal Centers for Disease Control has urged FEMA to move residents of the affected units into other housing before hot weather arrives, when formaldehyde emissions typically rise. The Joint Housing Solutions Group will evaluate Gulf Coast-type cottages and other kinds of housing developed through the Alternative Housing Pilot Program. This will be “a unique opportunity to assess occupied homes under actual living conditions,” FEMA said. Daigle told New Urban News: “The CNU can lay claim to having ignited the original spark, when the NU Recovery Charrette participants, and in particular Andres [Duany], questioned the dignity and appropriateness of FEMA’s inadequate housing solutions in the face of such catastrophic disaster. … It is significant that Federal agencies are talking to one another and especially that HUD is now involved. It feels that Federal bureaucracy has been touched by humanity!” Daigle said the list of requirements for future FEMA disaster housing “looks vaguely similar to the list created by a small group of us who met several times” in the months after the fall 2005 charrette, attempting to move the Katrina Cottage effort forward.