Who is likely to buy the fema trailers that are for sale?
Some 350 Iowa families living in FEMA trailers will soon have the option of buying the trailers. The majority of FEMA’s trailers in Iowa are located near Cedar Rapids, with other large pockets in Black Hawk and Louisa counties. Lori Maach of FEMA’s Iowa Disaster Field Office says the voluntary program could be convenient for many families. “It becomes their permanent housing plan. It speeds up the recovery process for them. They’re located in a unit, they do not have to move to an apartment or a house and it may be something that they’ve determined that they would like to be a mobile home owner,” Maach says. She says it is also a benefit for the government. Maach says,”It is a cost saving to the government to look at selling the units. It also does help with the permanent housing plan for individuals affected by the disaster, so it’s two fold.” Maach says residents have been sent information on the program and must decide whether they wish to stay in trailers and She says they have 30
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A year and a half after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, FEMA is auctioning off at fire-sale prices thousands of trailers used by storm victims, raising fears among mobile-home dealers that the government will flood the market and depress prices. Mobile home dealers are finding that some potential customers would rather wait to make a deal on a used FEMA trailer than drop $25,000 to $40,000 for a brand-new one. “People think they’re just going to get to buy them for nothing,” said Gale Crews, owner of Diamond State Mobile Home Sales in Hope, where FEMA is storing 20,000 trailers at the city’s airport. Some of the FEMA trailers will sell for less than half of what they cost new. Sources: www.msnbc.msn.
