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Governor Unveils New Plans for Louisiana Flood Recovery Housing

The state will bring in mobile home units to help house flood victims. But officials emphasized the dwellings are different from the much-maligned "FEMA travel trailers."

State leaders are responding to the housing crunch that has followed mass flooding across South Louisiana with a three-pronged plan to assist flood victims shift into the next phase of housing needs, including bringing in temporary manufactured housing units, as was done in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

More than 2,000 people remain in shelters, and already 120,000 households have applied for disaster assistance from the federal government, after deadly floods that have left thousands of people displaced from their homes.

Leaders have spent the past week working to craft a plan for how to aid people who cannot immediately return to their flood-damaged homes, with Gov. John Bel Edwards often stressing the need to tailor a program to the flood victims' needs.

News that the plan would include mobile homes didn't come as a surprise, but officials remained light on details Wednesday in announcing it.

"These are not the same as FEMA trailers that have been used in the past," Edwards said. "They are more like mobile homes than pull-behinds."

FEMA's much-maligned, so-called "travel trailers" became a symbol of the dysfunctional recovery following Hurricane Katrina. After the 2005 storm, thousands were placed in the white-paneled, cramped travel trailers that would eventually be deemed hazardous to inhabitants' health.

FEMA leaders have spent the past week stressing that any temporary housing units used to house victims of the flood that led to disaster declarations for 20 parishes here this month would be newer models, unlike the Katrina trailers.

"This is not the FEMA travel trailers," FEMA head Craig Fugate said last week. "If we need to bring in any kind of temporary housing units, they are better than they've ever been. They are all HUD approved."

Zach Patton -- Executive Editor. Zach joined GOVERNING as a staff writer in 2004. He received the 2011 Jesse H. Neal Award for Outstanding Journalism
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