On May 4 a New York Times article reported that term limits will prevent New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin from seeking another term in office after his current term runs out on the last day of May next year. While a recent poll by the University of New Orleans showed that Mayor Nagin currently has the lowest approval rating of any New Orleans Mayor since 1986 (the first year the poll was ever conducted) and most local residents say they are ready for a change in leadership, the quickly approaching deadline for the removal of the last remaining FEMA trailers has likely been met with a much greater degree of anxiety.

On the last day of May of this year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently announced, the last of the thousands of temporary mobile homes for individuals whose houses were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina will be removed from New Orleans and either scrapped or sold “for a fraction” of their original price. In the New York Times article about the story, Shaila Dewan reported that there are still more than 3,000 people living in the FEMA trailers who are reliant on them and have nowhere else to go. 

In an ideal world, of course, the removal of the trailers would be grounds for celebration of the fact that permanent housing had been completed and locals who have been dependent upon the toxic trailers for three and a half years would finally be able to move into new, or at least newly repaired homes. This, however, is not the case. While FEMA officials have claimed that the residents can buy the trailers “for as little as $300, [...] virtually all of the residents interviewed [by the New York Times] said they had offered to do so and been told they could not.”

As if the bureaucratic confusion has not been frustrating enough, what’s even worse is that the majority of people who are still living in the trailers “are elderly, disabled or both, including double amputees, diabetes patients, the mentally ill, people prone to seizures and others dependent on oxygen tanks.” While FEMA officials have made efforts to secure permanent housing options for the people who will lose their homes on May 31, organizations for the homeless such as the Capital Area Alliance for the Homeless and Unity of Greater New Orleans have also stepped in to provide assistance, thus giving legitimacy to the claim that people are truly in danger of being put out onto the streets.