A housing solution for New Orleans?

[DDT]

It looks like they aren't going to rebuild much of it. They are restructuring the levees (some of the billion dollar babies are already leaking ) so the big developers can move in and make "better" housing than those old "slums". I wonder since New Orleans is such a tourist town and the people who lived in all those "slums" were the maids, bartenders, musicians, etc. that made the tourism industry work exactly what the "big plan" is for all this. We do know one thing though...just like always in Louisiana that governor and mayor have millions "missing" and nobody seems to be to interested in finding outwhere they went... this long after Katrina and the saga goes on...

[JimJack42]

flower power I agree with you on a lot of that stuff but my question is WHY REBUILD? All the smart people like scientist say it is going to happen again. I tell ya if my house got ripped like theirs did I would move up stream a little maybe a foot or two above water..as for the trailers I would like to know who's idea that was. He needs to live in one in tornado ally in NC.

[Flower Power]

I wasn't saying GIVE them houses. I was saying if it was done as a non-profit they could be done cheap, and then the government could give them cheap loans or whatever if need be and they could afford to get on with their lives.
Fact is we've paid and are still paying enough for travel trailers, rent subsidies and mobile homes we could have given them houses by now.
Heck, we're letting the goose stepping Nazi Iranians dictate terms to us at the UN (while we pay for the building & most of their operating costs) I'd rather give the money to people in New Orleans than the UN 

[Rob]

Why is it the federal government's responsiblity to provide houses for these poor folks? I'm sure there's a reason, could someone please explain?

[Flower Power]

Our government at non-work...since my wife told me to "put up or shut up" I decided after seeing the travel trailer guy doing the photo-ops with Bush the other day to try and give them my idea.
I called over 30 government offices (including the one my congressman's office told me to call.
Nobody in the Mayor's office or Governor's office in New Orleans/Baton Rouge would even talk to me, called FEMA offices & others everybody said call somebody else, (the FEMA office actually administering the New Orleans area just hung up on me) finally got to the "right" office with FEMA in Washington.
Got a nice little secretary who gave me an almost recorded sounding political speech about how the administration was looking at many options and ideas and basically "they had it under control"...
Whatever happened to "government by the people & for the people?"
They are talking about 100 BILLION dollars to spend down there and for that my idea would just give everybody a brand new house! It could help everybody that needs it for probably a couple of billion if it was managed without $300 hammers.
All that crap on TV is just that, they don't care about those people, they are just going to throw some money (lots of it) at the problem and it will be skimmed off by contractors & their political buddies like always. 
Spent almost a whole day on the phone, so when you see them on TV talking about "we are working on solutions" while all those people sit homeless a year later don't believe a word of it. It's just another corrupt government program...

Kind-of like all that "rebuilding" we were supposed to do in Iraq that billions went to but nothing got done. And now they are sending AA couple hundred million to Lebanon and we didn't even blow any of that stuff up... homeless in New Orleans & Mississippi but send money to Lebanon...now that makes sense...

[Rich]

WOW was I wrong...it's 150,000 trailers!! That's right one hundred and fifty thousand!

And today they admitted 3 BILLION dollars in FEMA "overruns" on no-bid contracts in New Orleans! The great idea above would have built a hell of a lot of houses for 3 BILLION dollars!

[Rich]

No Joke,
I just saw a deal yesterday where they are really worried if another hurricane comes close (even a good tropical storm) because there are so many "travel trailers" (I thing they said over 20,000) and they blow away at about 40-50 mph. And there are so many there would be no way to secure them or anyway to move them inland if anything came along.... It's ridiculous, millions of dollars and no real solution for the Katrina victims, they could easily be "blown away" again 

They should have let the Casino bosses run everything  ...seems like most of them have already rebuilt and are only concerned because there's not enough people back there to spends their $$. 

[conlib]

Makes too much sense and doesn't meet the Govts conditions - current plan makes Govt seem like it is their mother taking care of them.
I was at New Orleans in Nov last year - tragic situation. The relief agencies did so much more than the Govt and did it for much less money outlay. The Christian agencies really shined and gave tremendous amounts of money, sweat, tears, and 1000s of hours of free labor and they are the main reason that area is even starting to get back on it's feet. But...they are "Christian" and God (or should I say Liberals) forbid they should get resources from the Govt lest the Govt be tainted and tear down the imaginary "Wall" between church and state. What a disgusting level the greatest country in the world (at least for now) has sunken to trying not to offend anyone (but Christians). It makes my heart grieve

[Flower Power]

I saw where FEMA is spending like $60,000 for RV trailers for people to live in temporarily in New Orleans. 
Other people do not want to return. Why would they? You are a family of 4 living in a government paid apartment and they expect you to move that may people back into an RV in front of a house you don’t have money to repair (if it can be repaired)? That would be dumb for anybody.
This solves nothing.
However a modular builder (like they use for apartments, pre-fab housing, motels, prisons, etc.) could construct a building facility in New Orleans (providing jobs & taxes for residents, keeping the tax base) and instead of wasting all this money on rent subsidies or over-priced RV's they could design a basic "core" unit with all water, electric etc. for initial foundation construction. Then maybe 8-10 different basic room unit designs for different size families & different needs. These would connect to the utilities in the "core" foundation unit just like they do in other construction.
A family could (based on what they had before and their needs) select a combination of units that best suited them. These could be designed to be more hurricane resistant & energy efficient than the old frame houses.
With mass production even basically skilled labor could have good jobs building them; then they could be moved and finally assembled on the location of the old house. Maybe costing $40-$60K at most to give people a new home if they sold them at cost.
If they needed to; no-interest, long-term loans could be provided so it wasn't "welfare" (right wing argument) and people could do the final finishing (like painting) themselves so every house wouldn't look identical.
This could solve the housing problem for the poorest areas of the city while bringing jobs back to support other business & taxes in the city and giving "refugees" a great incentive to return & have pride of ownership in a new home to improve their neighborhoods even more.
Hopefully you get the idea. I have seen many shows on how economical it is to build this way (most motels, apartments and even prisons are built this way nowadays) and it could be done faster & with less waste and chance for corruption than any "conventional" rebuilding (if they wanted to be really great they could use "green" features in the units to make far more eco-friendly housing than those old frame homes)
Just an idea that is seems to me to be better than continuing to pay for expensive RV housing and/or subsides for rent with the government basically "paying" former residents encouraging them NOT to return to New Orleans.

If they can’t find some real solution like this (I’m just a plain person, no economist or builder or anything, surely the "experts" could figure it out) maybe what some say is true; maybe it is a sly way to restructure New Orleans and get rid of what some prejudiced people consider the “undesirable” people.