Disaster Housing: A New Strategy

A while back, I did a post for Apartment Therapy about FEMA trailers and how people managed to pack their entire lives into pretty tiny spaces after Hurricane Katrina. The trailers may have been better than nothing, but they also weren’t places that people anticipated living in for such long lengths of time.

In short, this disaster housing was far from ideal.

Now FEMA has just released the National Disaster Housing Strategy, which “summarizes the many sheltering and housing capabilities, principles, and policies that guide and inform the disaster housing process.”

The Strategy also calls for a National Disaster Housing Task Force, chaired by FEMA and jointly led with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the American Red Cross. The Task Force will include experts from all levels of government, the private sector and non-governmental organizations, and will focus full time attention on disaster housing, developing operational plans, building disaster housing capabilities, and “achieving the vision and goals of the Strategy.”

All this work wasn’t done without input; they took into account nearly 500 comments from individuals, industry representatives, associations, and State and local government representatives.

Were any of the disaster trailer residents among them? I’m pretty sure they would have plenty of thoughts to contribute…