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[109 Senate Hearings]
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S. Hrg. 109-962
FEMA'S MANUFACTURED HOUSING PROGRAM: HASTE MAKES WASTE
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FIELD HEARING IN HOPE, ARKANSAS
__________
APRIL 21, 2006
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
TOM COBURN, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Jennifer A. Hemingway, Professional Staff Member
Jay W. Maroney, Counsel
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
A. Patricia Rojas, Minority Professional Staff Member
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1
Senator Pryor................................................ 3
WITNESSES
Friday, April 21, 2006
Hon. Mike Ross, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Arkansas....................................................... 5
David Garratt, Acting Director of Recovery Efforts, Federal
Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security....................................................... 8
Richard L. Skinner, Inspector General, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security.............................................. 12
Hon. Dennis Ramsey, Mayor, City of Hope.......................... 29
J.D. Harper, Executive Director, Arkansas Manufactured Housing
Association.................................................... 31
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Garratt, David:
Testimony.................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 47
Harper, J.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 31
Prepared statement........................................... 88
Ramsey, Hon. Dennis:
Testimony.................................................... 29
Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 75
Ross, Hon. Ross:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 43
Skinner, Richard L.:
Testimony.................................................... 12
Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 57
FEMA'S MANUFACTURED HOUSING PROGRAM: HASTE MAKES WASTE
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FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2006
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Hope, Arkansas
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m., in
the Johnny Rapart Auditorium, University of Arkansas Community
College at Hope, 2500 South Main, Hope, Arkansas, Hon. Susan
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins and Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. I am Susan Collins, Senator from Maine,
and I am Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee. I'm very pleased to be here
today with my colleague from Arkansas, a very valued Member of
the Committee, Senator Mark Pryor.
Today, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee continues its investigation into the
preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina by examining
the purchase of manufactured homes by FEMA to assist the Gulf
Coast region residents displaced by the hurricanes. Instead,
however, thousands of these homes are being stored, unused, at
the Hope Municipal Airport at a tremendous cost while people
remain in dire need of housing.
Let me begin by thanking my distinguished colleague,
Senator Pryor, for his diligence in pursuing this important
matter and for proposing that I come to Hope in order to
conduct this hearing. I also want to thank our very gracious
host, the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope, and
I want to extend a special welcome to the many students that I
see have joined us today. I hope this will give you a greater
understanding of how the Senate conducts its oversight
hearings, and we welcome you here today. We're very pleased to
have you here.
Our Committee's investigation into the preparation for and
response to Hurricane Katrina is now approaching its eighth
month, and this is our 22nd hearing. I anticipate that it will
be the last hearing that we hold as part of our investigation.
During our investigation, we have found failures of
planning, preparation, execution, and above all, of leadership
that span all levels of government, local, State, and Federal.
No aspect of these failures is more infuriating, however, than
the waste of scarce resources that should be going to relieve
the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Americans following
the greatest natural disaster in our Nation's history.
An early example of this waste surfaced at one of our
Committee's very first hearings on Hurricane Katrina last
September, and that was the infamous ice shipments to nowhere.
Believe it or not, ice that was designated for the victims of
Hurricane Katrina ended up in my home State of Maine. Now,
bringing ice to Maine is a little bit like bring coal to
Newcastle, and this was an early indication to us of the
logistics and planning failures that our investigation
subsequently went on to verify. As the details of the waste and
mismanagement emerged during our investigation, I expressed
concern that the ice example was just the tip of the iceberg.
We have now found a great deal more of that iceberg: It is
right here in Hope, Arkansas.
In order to provide transitional housing for the victims of
the Gulf Coast hurricanes, FEMA purchased nearly 25,000
manufactured homes at a cost of more than $850 million. Due to
the large number of homes purchased and the need to prepare
sites before distributing them, FEMA assigned the U.S. Forest
Service the mission of setting up multiple storage sites,
including the one here in Hope.
Today, fewer than half of these homes have been put into
service. The rest remain in storage, including 10,000 here in
Hope. Meanwhile, just a few hundred miles away on the Gulf
Coast and nearly 8 months after Hurricane Katrina devastated
entire communities, many people still lack safe, temporary
housing.
Even more infuriating than the waste itself is the reason
it occurred. It turns out that FEMA's own regulations prohibit
placing these manufactured homes in floodplains. Yet FEMA went
ahead with these purchases, knowing that virtually the entire
affected region sits in a floodplain.
I want to commend the work of the Department of Homeland
Security's Inspector General, who first brought this matter to
the Committee's attention. I'm also told by my colleague that
the initial exposure was the result of some very diligent
reporting right here in Hope. It is only by shining the bright
light of day on fraud, waste, and abuse that we can root it out
and ensure that taxpayers' money is spent wisely and
appropriately.
I think all of us want to make sure that we're generous
with our tax dollars and our private donations in helping the
people of the Gulf Region rebuild their lives and their
communities, but it is infuriating to all of us when we learn
that hundreds of millions of dollars are lost to wasteful
spending, fraudulent practices, and inappropriate contracts. I
also want to commend the officials and the residents of the
City of Hope for all of their efforts to aid in the relief of
individuals who evacuated to this area prior to Hurricane
Katrina's landfall. I learned also from my colleague, Senator
Pryor, that Arkansas took in more people on a per capita basis
than virtually any other State.
The wasteful expenditures that we will explore and examine
today should prompt a thorough review of FEMA's procurement
process and logistics planning. The fact that the 2006
hurricane season begins just a little over a month from now
adds special urgency to our task, with forecasters predicting a
year even more brutal than last. It is simply unacceptable
that, as we prepare for a new round of disasters, the suffering
from a catastrophe 8 months ago persists surrounded by mounting
evidence of wasteful spending and missed opportunities. I look
forward to hearing all of the testimony from our witnesses
today.
Finally, I want to express special thanks to two members of
my staff, Trina Tyrer and Jenny Gagnon, who arrived here at 2
a.m. this morning to set up for this hearing. We were in Rhode
Island yesterday for another field hearing, and they made
tremendous efforts to get here and set up before we arrived. So
I just want to thank them publicly for their tremendous efforts
as well. Thank you.
It's now my pleasure to call upon Arkansas's own Senator, a
wonderful member of our community who contributes greatly to
our work, Senator Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR
Senator Pryor. Thank you, Senator Collins, and it's great
to have you here in Arkansas. Let's give her a round of
applause.
(Applause.)
Senator Pryor. This is her first time in the State, and
she's not disappointed. The hospitality has been wonderful, and
she has given a special thank you to this campus, the students,
and Chuck Welch. Chuck, wherever you are, thank you for doing
all that you do here on this campus. We appreciate your
leadership and all that you do. And of course, Congressman
Ross, thank you for being here. And as people in this room
know, Congressman Ross, a very pro-active, very effective
Congressman in Washington, is a great advocate for the 4th
District, so it's great to have you here and have you lead off
this morning. And of course, my staff has been fantastic, just
working overtime to try to make this work.
But for those of you in the audience today, please
understand it's a big deal for the Chairman of this Committee
to come all the way to Arkansas to have a hearing on the mobile
homes that are in Hope. Obviously, it's an issue of national
importance, and we understand that, but for her to travel here
and to come here and to have a full Committee hearing here in
Hope we think is a first. We'd have to look back at the record
and see if any other committees of the Senate have ever met
here.
But she's been a great leader on this issue and a number of
other issues in the Senate and on the Committee. In fact, a few
months ago we traveled down to New Orleans together, again a
Committee trip, and also went to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.
And I think she mentioned this is the 22nd hearing we have
had on Hurricane Katrina, so sometimes people back home ask,
``What in the world are you doing in Washington about Katrina
and all the aftermath, all the mess, after Katrina? '' Well,
this Senator right here, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, is
really taking the leadership role in Washington on that, and
she needs to be commended on that.
One of the things that we both talked about today was when
we went to New Orleans--we've seen the devastation there.
Certainly here in this area we've seen tornados come through,
and we know what devastation is like, but if you go to the Gulf
Coast of Mississippi, you see city blocks that are no longer
there, you see some neighborhoods that have some serious
damage. When you go down to New Orleans, what you see is, you
see not just block after block, even neighborhood after
neighborhood, but you really see section after section of town
that's been devastated by the hurricane.
I know that Hope and this community really want to play a
role in that recovery, and I know that when the Mayor and other
leaders here worked out the contract with FEMA for the airport
it was a win-win for everybody. Certainly it was good for the
city and good for the community, but it was going to be great
for the victims of the hurricane. And then, as we all know, not
very many of those mobile homes left here after they got here.
And so that's why we're here, to talk about that and to try
to make sure that we're better prepared for this upcoming
hurricane season. As the Chairman said, it looks like the 2006
hurricane season could be worse than 2005. That's what many
experts are predicting. So we have our hands full.
The Rand Corporation has estimated that in the Gulf Coast
area, after the two hurricanes went through, there were about
300,000 homes that were destroyed. That's an enormous number of
homes that were destroyed as part of the hurricane, and
certainly FEMA should be there to help as best they can. We
have people all over that part of the country that need
housing, and we have houses right here in Hope that need
people. So we're trying to put those two things together and
trying to make sure that we're better prepared for the next
time.
Some of the things that we've learned in the Committee
hearings that we've had in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
include the lack of planning and the lack of preparedness.
We've talked about how the old FEMA operated when James Lee
Witt was running FEMA, versus the FEMA in the last year or two.
That's one of the things that we tried very hard to do on
the Committee--and actually this Committee is exemplary for
being very non-partisan. We don't get into the blame game; we
don't come just to point fingers and say, ``It's all your
fault,'' or, ``We could have done better.'' That is real easy
to do. The hard thing is to get up and to look at the
challenges that are before us and try to come up with solutions
that make sense. And so we're trying to do that here, and I
want to thank all the people who showed up today, and most of
all, I want to thank Senator Collins for taking a day out of
her very busy schedule to come to Hope to have this hearing
today. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. I am very pleased to welcome
our first witness for the hearing, Congressman Mike Ross.
Congressman, we are pleased you could be here. I know you have
worked very hard on this issue, and I appreciate your sharing
your insights with the Committee. Please proceed with your
statement.
TESTIMONY OF HON. MIKE ROSS,\1\ A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS
Representative Ross. Thank you, Senator Collins, Senator
Pryor. I want to thank the Committee and Committee staff for
coming to Hope, Arkansas, one of my home towns. I am a 1979
graduate of Hope High School. You drove by it on the way out
here today. And this is a community where I grew up and where I
still have a lot of family and friends, and I live just 16
miles down the road now in Prescott, Arkansas.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Representative Ross appears in the
Appendix on page 43.
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And quite frankly, up until about--what was it, Mayor?--
October of last year, we were known as the birthplace of
President Clinton, and since then we've become known as the
mobile home capital of America. The Mayor was telling me a few
weeks ago he hadn't done this many national press interviews
since Bill Clinton won the presidency. And I have certainly
become known in Arkansas, as well as among my colleagues in
Washington, as the mobile home congressman.
I have to tell you that I have been surprised at the way
this has brought Hope to the national stage. I have been here
at the Hope airport with CNN and Fox News and NPR and Senator
Harry Reid, and now you, Senator Collins, in the Senate hearing
today, and yet, FEMA continues to drag its feet, and they
continue to perform in ways that I believe are inadequate, and
certainly, they need to be held accountable for what they are
not doing here at this so-called FEMA staging area in Hope.
Basically, Hope was selected--and the Mayor will talk more
about this--as a FEMA staging area primarily because it is an
old World War II era airport with all these old inactive
runways and tarmacs and taxiways, with the theory being that
FEMA would be bringing these manufactured homes in and then
taking them out, and they would come in and they would go out,
and they would utilize those old tarmacs and old taxiways and
old runways for that purpose.
Well, they all came and none of them went, until recently,
at least. And so now we find ourselves with well over 10,000
brand-new, fully furnished manufactured homes, 25 percent of
which are sitting on these inactive tarmacs, runways, and
taxiways, 75 percent of which are sitting in an adjoining hay
meadow. I used to call it a cow pasture, and the Mayor got onto
me and said, ``Mike, there have not been cows out there in a
hundred years.'' But the point is, they are just sitting there
on the grass. I promised him I would stop calling it that, and
now I call it the hay meadow. And the point is that we've got
75 percent of the brand-new, fully furnished manufactured homes
just sitting there in a pasture.
I know at one time the Inspector General had been in an
interview on national TV saying they were beginning to sink,
and, thank goodness, that's not true. They have not started to
sink. But they eventually will if we do not do something.
I always thought the definition of doing something was
moving them to the homeless, but FEMA's definition of doing
something is spending $4.2 million throwing gravel into the hay
meadow. They are literally in the process right now--and you
can go out there and look; the gravel trucks are running
today--they are spending $4.2 million of our tax money putting
gravel on 170 acres.
Now, we have heard a lot of excuses about how we ended up
with well over 10,000 brand-new, fully furnished manufactured
homes just sitting here at the airport in Hope, Arkansas. FEMA
first said, ``Well, the parishes in Louisiana do not want
them.'' That was the first excuse that we heard.
Well, there are at least eight parishes in Louisiana that
do want them. And I understand that no community wants 10,000
manufactured homes in their backyard, but over eight parishes
do, and it should not be a problem getting them to the people
that need them. But it is. It is because those eight parishes
are located in a floodplain, and FEMA has decided that they
will not place manufactured homes in a floodplain. They will
tell you that was the rule before they went out and purchased
over 20,000 brand-new, fully furnished manufactured homes.
And why did they purchase them? They purchased them to
house temporarily, up to 8 months, the storm victims from
Hurricane Katrina. Well, didn't FEMA have enough sense to
understand that everybody that lost their home in Hurricane
Katrina lived in a floodplain? And yet, they went out and
purchased all of these, knowing full well that they could not
locate them in a floodplain, and now that is their excuse for
having 10,000 brand-new, fully furnished manufactured homes
sitting here at the airport in Hope, Arkansas. It makes no
sense.
And what about Mississippi? Just recently there were 100
families living in military-style tents in Mississippi. They
would love to live in one of these brand-new, fully furnished
manufactured homes. Over 10,000 families, at my last count, are
living in hotel rooms across the country. Taxpayers are paying
for that, and yet we have over 10,000 brand-new, fully
furnished manufactured homes sitting out at the airport in
Hope, Arkansas.
Senator Pryor and I have legislation filed in the Congress
that basically tells FEMA, ``You know, if we can put tents in
floodplains, if we can put over 70,000 camper trailers in
floodplains, it may not be ideal, but you know what? It will
probably be OK to locate these brand-new, fully furnished
manufactured homes temporarily, for up to 18 months, in a
floodplain.''
The President talked about this at a press conference a
couple of weeks ago. It is real simple. We do not even need the
legislation Senator Pryor and I have filed. The President can
actually type out one sentence. It does not even need to be two
sentences. One sentence, sign his name, at the top you put the
words, ``Executive Order,'' and we can start moving these more
than 10,000 brand-new, fully furnished manufactured homes from
Hope to the people who so desperately need them today.
Now, to me, this is a symbol of what is wrong with FEMA. I
mean, you just go out to the airport and see more than 10,000
brand-new, fully furnished manufactured homes just sitting
there. That is the symbol of what is wrong with FEMA, and here
is what I mean by that: We had a devastating series of tornados
in Arkansas just a few weeks ago. The community, the town, the
small town of Marmaduke, was basically wiped off the map.
It has taken U.S. Senators, U.S. Congressmen, you would not
believe the resources of people that have gone in begging FEMA
to move 25 out of these 10,000 brand-new, fully furnished
manufactured homes just down the road in the same State to
Marmaduke, where people are homeless. It took a minimum of 2
weeks. It took a minimum of 2 weeks just to get 25 of these
brand-new, fully furnished manufactured homes moved.
My point is that when you think of a fire department, you
think of immediate response. When you think of FEMA, as a
Federal agency, it is one of the few Federal agencies that I
always thought of as an immediate response. If it takes them 2
weeks to move 25 mobile homes from Hope to Marmaduke, they
still have not learned many of the painful lessons that a lot
of us now understand and learned on August 29, 2005.
And finally, let me just say that there has been about 300
approved to be moved to Oklahoma for wildfire victims. I am not
sure how many of those have gotten to the people that actually
need them. We are still trying to get mobile homes to those
that have recently found themselves victims of tornados.
We are still trying to get them to the more than 10,000
people living in hotel rooms all across this country. That is
no way to raise a family. And it is not just those that were on
government assistance before the hurricanes hit. I mean,
Senator--I'm sorry, Congressman Gene Taylor from Mississippi
lost his home and everything he owns in the hurricane down
there. And he is one of the fortunate people. He's got a job,
he's got an income, he has insurance. And yet, the contractor
is telling him it will be at least 2 years before they can get
around to rebuilding his home. So I mean, there are a lot of
people homeless today who had resources, who have money and
have insurance, but yet they remain homeless because of the
magnitude of this storm.
Now, FEMA is probably going to tell you that they are
getting ready to move 3,000 to 5,000 of these manufactured
homes. My question for FEMA will be, and will continue to be--I
live just down the road, and I'm going to continue to stay on
this until not a single manufactured home is left here, as long
as we've got people homeless. Once we meet the needs of the
homeless from the storms, then I will welcome FEMA using the
Hope airport as a permanent staging area, a staging area to
store the manufactured homes, refurbish these manufactured
homes for future natural disasters. But I'm not going to be
quiet about this as long as we've got one fully furnished
manufactured home sitting at the airport in Hope, Arkansas,
while people remain homeless from a hurricane that occurred
last August 29.
So the question for FEMA is when they start moving these
3,000 to 5,000 homes, are they moving them to the homeless or
are they moving them to other staging areas to basically get
them out of my back yard? That is a question for FEMA that I am
going to continue to ask until we know where these homes that
are leaving this airport are actually going, are they going to
people who so desperately need them.
And finally, let me just say, I grew up here. I know these
people. I know many of the people working for FEMA. It's been
good for the economy here, there is no doubt about that. And I
can tell you, the people I know that work for FEMA, they have
to just kind of wink or nod or smile because they are afraid
the bigshots at FEMA, if they come down, are going to fire them
if they see them doing or saying the wrong things. But I can
tell you, I know these people that work for FEMA in Hope,
Arkansas, and they are good people. They are like the people in
this community. They have a big heart, and they want to help
people.
And these folks didn't go to work for FEMA--including the
ones that were transferred in here--they did not go to work for
FEMA to babysit 10,000 brand-new, fully furnished manufactured
homes sitting in a hay meadow at the Hope airport. They went to
work for FEMA because they really want to help people. And
that's what the people in this community want to do. They want
to be our government's partners, and we want to help people. We
do not want to babysit over 10,000 brand-new, fully furnished
manufactured homes that are sitting out at the airport, but we
want to help people. And we want to help get these homes to the
people who remain homeless since August 29 and who so
desperately need them.
And with that, I thank you, Senator, for allowing me the
opportunity to come and appear before this Senate Committee--I
think it's a first for me. I don't think I've ever testified
before a Senate committee. Thank you for allowing me the
opportunity.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Congressman. You have raised a
number of important questions that we will get to with our next
panel. I am going to withhold my questions for the next panel,
and Senator Pryor will do the same. Thank you.
I would now like to call forward our second panel of
witnesses. David Garratt presently serves as the Acting
Director of Recovery for FEMA. The Recovery Division is
responsible for planning and providing policy and oversight of
the Federal Government's recovery efforts, including providing
temporary housing. I would note that Mr. Garratt has served in
key positions in more than 30 presidentially declared disasters
or emergency operations.
Richard Skinner is the Inspector General of the Department
of Homeland Security and has been with that office since it was
established in 2003. Our Committee had the honor of confirming
him for this position, and we work very closely with him. I
would note that he also served in the office of Inspector
General of FEMA for several years.
Thank you both for appearing today. We will begin with Mr.
Garratt.
TESTIMONY OF DAVID GARRATT,\1\ ACTING DIRECTOR OF RECOVERY
EFFORTS, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Garratt. Good morning, Madam Chairman and Senator
Pryor. My name is David Garratt. I am the Acting Director of
Recovery at FEMA. I am joined by Patricia English, FEMA's chief
procurement officer, and Ron Goins, a senior FEMA logistics
official. Today we will address the concerns raised regarding
the mobile homes that FEMA has staged at this site, as well as
discuss the role that these mobile homes will play in support
of both ongoing and future disaster support requirements.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Garratt appears in the Appendix
on page 47.
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I fully appreciate the compelling visual image and
intuitive concerns raised by the Hope manufactured housing
storage site. Thousands of unused mobile homes sit vacant in
Arkansas, even as many Louisiana and Mississippi victims of
Hurricane Katrina continue to wait for temporary housing. My
goal today is to explain the decisions behind use of this site,
as well as to outline FEMA's strategy for making use of each
mobile home situated at Hope. However, to place the explanation
in context, I would like to briefly outline FEMA's housing
program.
FEMA provides housing assistance to disaster victims in
accordance with the authorities and guidance in the Robert T.
Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, as
implemented in Agency regulations. The Stafford Act authorizes
the Federal Government to provide two types of housing
assistance: Financial assistance, in the form of rental
subsidies, and direct assistance, in the form of housing units.
Both types of assistance are, by law, temporary and generally
limited to 18 months. The principal form of assistance to the
vast majority of disaster victims, including victims of
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, is financial rental assistance. To
date, FEMA has provided rental assistance to over 715,000
Katrina and Rita households. The second form of assistance is
direct housing, which FEMA provides when there is insufficient
rental or housing stock in an affected area. Such was, and
remains, the case along the Gulf Coast.
FEMA recognized, even before Hurricane Katrina made
landfall, that a proactive housing strategy would be required
in its aftermath. Accordingly, FEMA established, prior to
landfall and for the first time, a Housing Area Command,
headquartered in Baton Rouge. The initial mission of the
Housing Area Command was threefold: To begin identifying
housing needs; to identify solutions, including all available
candidate group site locations; and to begin mobilizing and
moving temporary housing units into the affected areas as
quickly as possible.
FEMA established the Housing Area Command because we
realized that, after landfall, disaster response efforts would
be substantially--and rightly--focused on life-saving and
sustaining operations--always our first priority. Nevertheless,
recognizing that the scale of the housing mission was likely to
be massive, we wanted a dedicated housing component actively
pursuing housing options and solutions in parallel, but without
pulling assets and resources from immediate response efforts.
We asked the Housing Area Command to lean far forward, to
begin aggressively addressing the needs of the victims as
quickly as possible. The catastrophic scale of Hurricane
Katrina had a devastating impact on housing and apartment stock
in the Gulf Coast region, and hundreds of thousands of victims
were evacuating to safe havens throughout the country. This
greatly complicated the mission of the Housing Area Command as
it began to tackle the short and the long-term housing needs
and the most appropriate solutions for meeting those needs.
Recognizing that so many evacuees had suffered the loss of
their homes, the Housing Area Command ordered tens of thousands
of travel trailers and mobile homes. The Housing Area Command
also sought to identify other housing options, such as rental
units, that may provide a more sustainable environment. Within
weeks, FEMA began the process of receiving and installing these
units throughout the Gulf Coast region, both on private
property sites, as well as on group sites. As of today, this
strategy has provided 100,000--and that actually should be
115,000--manufactured housing units ready for occupancy
throughout the affected area. We believe this to be quite a
logistical feat, as it vastly outstrips any previous temporary
housing response and recovery effort in the United States.
These were the strategic considerations that guided our
tactical response as we made our initial purchases of mobile
homes and travel trailers. We purchased housing units as a
temporary measure to replace the tens of thousands of damaged
and destroyed homes and to rapidly provide a place for victims
to return home.
FEMA and DHS realized immediately that the road to recovery
would be difficult. In the absence of detailed information on
communities' specific housing needs and priorities, we were
still faced with the challenge of how to jump-start housing
recovery. One of our temporary housing strategies is to place a
travel trailer or a mobile home on a victim's private property,
next to their damaged or destroyed home, and thus support the
rebuilding effort by allowing the homeowner to remain on his or
her property.
FEMA purchased manufactured housing of many types because
the broad impact of Katrina had affected families of many sizes
and circumstances. As Katrina hit, FEMA placed orders for
thousands of manufactured housing units, knowing the housing
needs would be unprecedented. Orders to maximize the number of
travel trailer suppliers were complemented by orders to mobile
home suppliers, though in smaller numbers--to be certain we
could meet estimated needs of thousands of households and
support State and local government recovery strategies.
With that as a backdrop, let me explain the factors that
led to our excess mobile home inventory at Hope, Arkansas.
Three principal factors contributed to this situation.
The first factor relates to our evolving temporary housing
strategy. Initially, the Housing Area Command envisioned
establishing mega group sites consisting of thousands of mobile
homes as a rapid means of getting displaced evacuees back into
their affected State. However, this strategy, while
operationally defensible, was subsequently rejected, for
several reasons. One, the sites were not necessarily going to
be located in proximity to or populated by victims from nearby
communities, and, two, large group sites present social
management challenges, particularly at the local level. As a
result, FEMA and DHS reoriented the temporary housing strategy
to focus on smaller group sites in or in close proximity to
communities.
The second factor has been the reluctance of communities to
accept mobile homes in group sites. Mobile homes, while larger
and more spacious than travel trailers, are regarded with some
degree of trepidation by communities and neighborhoods, who
often view such temporary unit developments as potentially
permanent fixtures. As a result, there has been widespread
resistance to allowing such sites in many areas.
The final factor is floodplain restrictions. Placing mobile
homes in floodplains is prohibited by executive order and FEMA
regulations, unless those units follow a rigorous eight-step
mitigation process involving, among other requirements,
elevation above the flood level. This process is both expensive
and time-consuming, and has discouraged their use in many
areas.
While it would have been ideal to have a better
understanding of these limiting factors earlier in the recovery
effort and procurement process, prompt action did prevent
supply shortages from emerging later in the recovery effort. As
a result of these factors, FEMA has more mobile homes, here in
Hope, Arkansas, than it expects to employ in the Gulf Region.
While FEMA fully expects to draw down another 3,000 mobile
homes from Hope for use in Louisiana, we will still have some
excess, but we will seek to avoid waste. While all of the
mobile homes that were ordered in response to Hurricane Katrina
may not ultimately be used in the Gulf Region, many of these
units will be used to support other disaster response
operations. For example, units from Hope have been deployed to
Texas to provide temporary housing to victims of the State's
terrible wildfires, and other units will be used to support the
victims of recent tornadoes in Arkansas and nearby States.
Additionally, we will be redeploying a portion of this
inventory to staging areas in the northern tier of our Nation,
where their stability and increased protection from the cold
make them a preferable housing alternative over travel
trailers. Additional units are programmed to be moved farther
west, in support of potential disasters in the Pacific States
and our western States. Our goal is to relocate a total of
3,000 units from Hope to other staging areas over the next 4
months.
However, the 2006 hurricane season is less than 2 months
away, and a portion of the Hope inventory will play an
important role in our readiness. While we intend to reduce the
inventory through the uses I've just described, we intend to
maintain, at this time, a residual inventory of 5,000 units at
Hope to be ready for immediate deployment to the Gulf Region in
the event of another hurricane catastrophe. We will re-evaluate
the status of this inventory over time as the Gulf Coast
rebuilds its supply of permanent housing stock.
Finally, regardless of assertions to the contrary, the
mobile homes at our Hope storage facility are being maintained
in habitable condition and are ready for deployment. While it
has been erroneously reported otherwise, the tires sinking into
the mud resulting from a rainstorm does not damage a mobile
home. Similarly, it has been suggested that FEMA is using jacks
to prop up damaged units. In fact, using jacks is a required
storage technique for 70- and 80-foot models to assure
appropriate long-term staging and protection of the mobile
home. There are approximately 1,500 of these extended models at
the Hope site. Bottom line: Despite misinformation otherwise,
all mobile homes at Hope are mission ready.
All of us at FEMA and DHS appreciate the keen interest of
the Committee in all phases of our disaster response and
recovery efforts and stand ready to support you in this fact-
finding mission. We are carefully reviewing the full range of
reports and recommendations on our disaster housing efforts.
FEMA is pursuing a number of initiatives that will incorporate
appropriate lessons learned into our planning, guidance, and
strategy for ongoing recovery and our response to future
events.
Thank you. I and my colleagues will be pleased to answer
any questions you may have.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Inspector General Skinner.
TESTIMONY OF RICHARD L. SKINNER,\1\ INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Skinner. Thank you Senator Collins and Senator Pryor.
It's great to be here this morning in the State of Arkansas. As
I was saying earlier, this reminds me of my home State of West
Virginia with the beautiful, rolling hills. I had the
opportunity to drive here from Little Rock yesterday afternoon,
and it's a beautiful State.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Skinner with attachments appears
in the Appendix on page 57.
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Today, I'd like to focus my remarks on two questions I
think that need to be answered and need to be addressed in the
upcoming months. The first question is how did FEMA, the
Federal Government, get itself in this predicament, and
associated with that, what are we going to do to make sure this
does not happen again in the future.
The second question is, now that we are in this situation,
what is our exit strategy? What do we need to do to make sure
that we use these trailers or dispose of them in the best
interest of the Federal taxpayer?
We just initiated, a couple of weeks ago, a follow-up study
to address those two questions. And hopefully, we will have a
report, not only to the Secretary and to FEMA, but to the
Committee sometime late summer or early fall of this year.
What we are learning is that FEMA, in essence, is trying to
use traditional solutions to address untraditional events or
problems. That is, FEMA did not have, and has never had, a
national catastrophic housing strategy or plan. This is not
something that is new to FEMA or new to DHS. They were well
aware that we never had such a plan, and they were well aware
that they needed such a plan. In fact, in early 2003, FEMA
actually included or asked for funding so that it can begin
working with the States to develop a national catastrophic
housing plan, recognizing that, if there was a major terrorist
event, a major earthquake in Los Angeles, another earthquake
like we had in 1906 in San Francisco where millions of people
were displaced, or an event like what we had in New Orleans
where we have 300,000 people that have been displaced and
cannot go back home, it was not prepared to deal with a large
scale displacement of people.
Unfortunately, due to budget constraints and other
priorities, the Department never approved FEMA's request to
begin working on ways to develop a national housing plan, and
that's very unfortunate. However, the Department, using lessons
learned from Hurricane Katrina, is now reconsidering that
decision. They have, in fact, established a policy group to
study what went wrong and to develop action plans so that this
will not happen in the future. In fact, our office has been
asked to participate with that policy group and provide input
as they go through their study.
There's a lot of things that are going to need to be done.
This is not something that Homeland Security or FEMA can fix by
itself. It's going to require the collective efforts of other
Federal Departments, such as VA and Agriculture, who have
housing programs. It is also going to require the participation
of the State governments, it is going to require participation
from the local governments, it is going to require the
participation from the private sector, and it is going to
require participation from Congress.
Congress needs to be actively involved in this whole
process by looking at what type of legislation is needed, new
legislation and revised legislation in regard to the Stafford
Act, which gives FEMA the authority to respond to natural
disasters after a Presidential declaration. These are not all-
inclusive suggestions. These are the types of questions that we
are asking. We are going to be working with Congress and
working with FEMA. We will be talking with people throughout
the country, State and local governments, and the private
sector as well. I understand that there will be someone here
representing the mobile home industry today, and I think that
is wonderful. They need to be part of the solution.
The first thing that Congress, I think, can do is lift the
ceiling for minimal repairs. Right now, I think it's--David, is
the ceiling established at about $5,000 right now?
Mr. Garrat. Fifty-two hundred dollars.
Mr. Skinner. Fifty-two hundred dollars for minimal repairs.
That is not sufficient to do minimum repairs in today's market.
And as a result, that is forcing people into temporary housing
like trailers, mobile homes, or the hotels because they do not
have sufficient resources to repair their homes so they can
move back in. Fifty-two hundred dollars is not going to get you
back in many of these homes.
The second thing Congress might want to consider doing is
reinstating the Mortgage and Rental Assistance Act, or program,
I should say. That was a program that existed for years and was
abolished, I believe in 2003, just subsequent to the September
11 event in New York. That program allowed people who were
economically impacted, that is, lost their jobs because of a
disaster, to seek assistance to help pay their mortgages. We
have a lot of people today, now, who are affected by this, who
are unemployed, have large mortgages, and now are unable to
make their mortgage payments.
Other things that Congress can do, I think, is to take a
look at the restrictions that have been placed on FEMA, HUD,
VA, Agriculture, and others that have housing inventories
throughout the country. Early on, one of the things that FEMA
tried to do is to work with HUD, VA, and Agriculture,
recognizing that they have housing inventories out there that
we could put victims in; however, we could not use them because
these homes would not pass inspection, and FEMA did not have
the authority to repair the homes.
Probably, and I think in many cases, if not most cases,
FEMA could have repaired these homes at less cost than they are
paying right now for temporary housing, for trailers or the
mobile homes, something I'll get into later. I'll show you a
chart of what it's actually costing us. These are FEMA figures,
by the way.
If they had that authority, there was a whole inventory of
housing out there that they could have tapped into, and that's
still sitting out there, as a matter of fact, which they could
still tap into and get people out of trailers and mobiles
homes.
Another area that I think that Congress should look into is
helping FEMA--or that is the Federal Government--to provide
financial incentives to the private sector. There are a lot of
landlords out there with a lot of apartment buildings and a
large inventory of housing that is destroyed, and they do not
have the resources to go back and repair these apartment
buildings or to repair those homes that could be rented out.
If FEMA had the authority, that is, if the Federal
Government had the authority to provide incentives to these
people, such as low-interest loans, tax credits, things of that
nature, with a guarantee that, ``If you repair your apartment
building we can guarantee you tenants,'' we could take people
out of trailers and put them into apartments. Right now, the
Federal Government does not have the authority to do that.
The last thing is something we are going to study very
carefully and work closely with the Department's housing policy
group and with Congress, as well, with your staff, Senator
Collins and Senator Pryor. And that is, redefining what we mean
by temporary housing. I'm going to show you the costs later, in
a couple of minutes.
Regarding the issue of temporary housing versus permanent
housing, we are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to
provide temporary housing to individuals when, in fact, we
could probably build permanent structures at a lot less cost.
But right now, everyone's hands are tied. This is something I
think requires further study, further consideration.
Then, of course, there is the obvious thing that we need to
do in the future, which is to make sure this doesn't happen
again. The use of mobile homes, the use of trailers, I think is
a good thing to a certain degree. It should not be our primary
method of placing or housing people. But we also could do a
better job and do it in a more efficient, effective, and
economical way as to how we go about buying trailers and
modular homes.
What we did was a knee-jerk reaction. After the disaster,
we went out and bought everything on the market. I think we did
get discounts from the manufacturers, but when we started
buying off the lots, we did not get discounts. We were buying
trailers that did not meet specifications, that we cannot use.
After a disaster, we should have standing contracts with
manufacturers and retailers in disaster-prone areas. They are
what I call call-contracts. In other words, they are no-cost
contracts that we can tap into when there is a disaster. We
already know what our specifications are, and we do not have to
be reacting in an uneconomical way, as we did this time. I
think we were very wasteful, and we could have gotten a lot
more trailers that we really needed at a lot less cost.
Finally, FEMA, and I think that they are, in fact, doing
this--and that is, they definitely need to develop a national
catastrophic housing plan. And they need to do that in
collaboration with the Federal, State, and private sector.
That's one of the things they need to start working on, and
they need to start working on it now.
Now, I would like to turn very quickly--and I know I'm
running out of time--to the situation we're in now. I brought
some charts.\1\
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\1\ The chart referred to by Mr. Skinner appears in the Appenxix on
page 71.
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This is where we are at right now, this is a FEMA chart. We
now have 11 staging areas across the country. Our housing
inventory, I think, is around 16,000--or it is actually about
22,000 mobile homes, modular homes, and travel trailers.
The next chart shows the cost that it is going to cost to
maintain these 11 sites.\2\ And I understand there are also
going to be new sites, for example, Edison, New Jersey, and Mr.
Garratt mentioned earlier that we may be opening sites out
west. But to maintain these FEMA sites, it is almost $47
million a year. This does not include set-up costs. Marta
Metelko, please put up the cost chart.\3\
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\2\ The chart referred to by Mr. Skinner appears in the Appenxix on
page 72.
\3\ The chart referred to by Mr. Skinner appears in the Appenxix on
page 73.
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It is costing us, on an annual basis, just to maintain the
Hope site, over $3 million a year. This does not include the
$275,000 we have spent to pave the road; it does not include
the $4 million for the gravel that we are laying right now. So,
as you can see, it is very expensive to maintain these sites.
It is also very expensive to maintain the travel trailers.
I have one more chart, if I may.\4\ Marta Metelko, could you
show the cost just to maintain a travel trailer for the life
cycle of the travel? It costs well over $59,000 to maintain one
travel trailer for 18 to 36 months.
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\4\ The chart referred to by Mr. Skinner appears in the Appenxix on
page 74.
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Now, if you add all of these costs up, we could build
permanent housing for these people. Right now our hands are
tied, however. Here is where I think we can get Congressional
help. By the way, these cossts are on the low end. It can cost
as high as $75,000 per trailer. We did not break down the costs
for the larger units and the manufactured houses. I suspect it
is closer to $75,000 per trailer. It is a very expensive
proposition to maintain these things.
In summary, I would just like to say, I know FEMA may be
redeploying the trailers to areas across the country, to move
5,000 out of here. I understand they have a plan to reduce the
inventory to about 10,000 or 11,000 by September 30.
But my concern is that this is not a plan, it is an
assumption. It is ironic. We are hoping we can use the trailers
for disasters this summer. In essence, we are hoping for
disasters so that we can deplete our inventory. I mean, that is
how it sounds to me, and I find that discouraging.
We have to have a better plan than that. If there are
disasters, major disasters, fine--the assumption is that there
will be. But if there are not, we are going to end up with
about 16,000 of these things sitting out here for another year,
paying the rates that I just showed you. And the traditional
usage rate for travel trailers and mobile homes is at about
2,000 a year, going into a regular, traditional year. If we
have a big season, it is about 5,000.
So with the inventory we have right now, it could take us
anywhere from 3 to 8 years to deplete the inventory, at
considerable cost. I think FEMA needs to sit down and really
think this through. Do we want to maintain these trailers here
or do we want to find alternative needs? And I am not
suggesting that we flood the market with them, either, and sell
them for pennies on the dollar. FEMA should consider working
with Congress to obtain the authorization needed to use them
elsewhere for the public good.
That concludes my remarks, and I will be happy to answer
any questions you may have.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Mr. Garratt, in your statement you set forth three factors that
have contributed to the over-supply and under-use of the
manufactured homes at this site, and you said the final factor
is floodplain restrictions. Placing mobile homes in floodplains
is prohibited by Executive Order and FEMA's regulations unless
there is express authority granted after an expensive,
rigorous, eight-step mitigation process.
To me, that is a puzzling answer because the same agency
that purchased the manufactured homes is the same agency with
these regulations. It is not as if these regulations are from
another part of the Federal Government and FEMA was unaware of
them. These are not new regulations, are they?
Mr. Garratt. No, ma'am.
Chairman Collins. In fact, haven't they been in effect
since the late 1970s?
Mr. Garratt. I am not sure of the exact date of that
Executive Order, but it has been in place for some time.
Chairman Collins. The Executive Order is dated May 24,
1977, and the regulations, I am told, were issued within the
next year or so. So we are talking about regulations that
prohibit the use of this kind of housing in floodplains that
have been in effect for more than 25 years. Was the person who
ordered the manufactured homes unaware of those regulations?
Mr. Garratt. Not at all, ma'am. And I would like to go back
and talk about those three factors. Those three factors did not
necessarily exist as factors at one time, but in fact, the
factor regarding the use of mobile homes in a floodplain area
is a factor now.
Initially, the Housing Area Command, also as identified in
the testimony, identified that there was going to be a huge and
compelling need for temporary housing assistance, and the
initial plan was that we were going to set up these very large
mega mobile home communities, outside the floodplain and
removed from the affected area, so that we could keep people in
the State or bring people back into the State and then begin
transitioning them from these large, mega mobile home
communities back into the affected communities as rebuilding
took place.
That process was subsequently rejected, and we reoriented
our strategy to much smaller group sites, much closer to the
communities that were affected. These communities were in the
floodplain area, or a great majority of these communities were
in the floodplain area. As a result, because of that initial
strategy, which was a plan to set up these large communities
outside the floodplains, we had an excess.
The factors that have come into play since then, which are
the resistance to having large mobile home group sites in and
around some communities, as well as the floodplain regulations,
prevent us now from using that excess to the extent that we
would like.
Chairman Collins. Well, we have learned that virtually the
entire region that was affected by Katrina is in a floodplain.
I am curious about your comment and your testimony when you say
that you anticipate a residual inventory of 5,000 units at Hope
to be ready for immediate deployment to the Gulf Region in the
event of another hurricane catastrophe. It is still a
floodplain. I do not understand planning to use 5,000 homes for
the Gulf Region when your own regulations continue to prohibit
that kind of use.
We are not talking about a small area that is the
floodplain. It is an enormous area, and people want to be as
close to their homes as possible, which was the failure of the
first point that you made. So I do not understand your hope
that you are going to be able to use some 5,000 units that
would be stored here for immediate deployment to the Gulf
Region in the event of another hurricane. It sounds to me like
you are making the same miscalculation again.
Mr. Garratt. Madam Chairman, we have already used, and we
have people occupying, close to 6,000 mobile homes in the Gulf
Coast region of the States of Louisiana and Mississippi right
now. And while I will acknowledge that there are great tracts
of both States that are within a floodplain, there are also
areas within both States that are outside the floodplain. There
are also fringe areas of the floodplain where the elevation
requirements are extremely modest. It is one thing to elevate a
mobile home six feet off the ground, and the costs and effort
associated with that; it is another to elevate it one foot off
the ground or less, so we have options to employ those mobile
homes.
And again, we have executed those options in response to
Hurricane Katrina, so we would expect in another catastrophe
there will be an opportunity to use those 5,000 mobile homes.
And as mentioned in the testimony, we are still planning to use
an additional 3,000 mobile homes in the State of Louisiana, and
they are still proceeding to move mobile homes into the State
of Mississippi.
Chairman Collins. Well, Louisiana has not had its housing
needs met, and that is a complaint that Senator Pryor and I
have received every time we have talked with Louisiana
officials. In that case, however, there are some complications
which are not attributable to FEMA. I read just recently, for
example, that a plan to locate some travel trailers and
manufactured homes in the New Orleans area was approved at
first by the Mayor, and then that approval was rescinded.
That gets to, I think, the second point that you made, of
dealing with the reluctance of communities to accept mobile
homes in group sets. How big of a problem is that and how is
FEMA taking that into account in its planning for the 2006
hurricane season?
Mr. Garratt. That is a very good question, Madam Chairman.
It is enough of a problem that we still have individuals in
hotels and motels in the State of Louisiana. I think we still
have, in Louisiana and Mississippi combined, something over a
thousand households that are still in hotels and motels. That
is out of the tens of thousands that we had in hotels and
motels several months ago. The only ones remaining are in Gulf
Coast States, and the reason that they are still in hotels and
motels is because we have run into some resistance with some of
the group sites that we had planned and that we had hoped to
have up and running by this time.
We are working around those issues. We are continuing to
press on some of those group sites, and we are looking for
alternatives for group sites that we cannot pursue. In terms of
the 2006 hurricane season, I participated in a couple of after-
action and planning conferences very recently, both with the
Corps and with our Federal partners. We recognize that this is
a key issue and that up-front planning with the localities
would go a long way toward helping us overcome these
situational issues.
So we will be redoubling our efforts this year, working
principally through Gil Jamieson, who is our new Deputy
Director for Gulf Coast Recovery, to work with those States to
identify in advance those areas that they would establish as
group site locations so that we do not need to negotiate these
locations after the fact, but have in fact identified several
of these locations that we can take immediate action to begin
setting up following an event.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Skinner, in the testimony that we
will hear from Mr. Harper on the next panel, he makes the point
that there was existing inventory of manufactured housing at
retailers that could have been used to meet some of the needs
of the hurricane's victims, but instead FEMA required
manufacturers to interrupt their production and produce
manufactured housing that met FEMA specifications.
Typically, when the government requires an item to be built
to different specifications than is common for the retail
version of the item, it increases costs and it also delays
delivery. Do you have any comments on that? Was it necessary to
go for a unique product or could FEMA have used some of the
already available inventory?
Mr. Skinner. That's a good question. We have not looked at
that, at least from that perspective. FEMA does have
specifications. We want to be consistent. It creates problems,
and I know we have observed this in our work. That is, if one
trailer doesn't have the standard equipment and another does,
that creates friction among those that want the trailers. And
as far as applying for assistance, I think it would be better
if we could be as consistent as possible when we do assign
trailers to evacuees, or to the homeless, to those that need
temporary housing. Did it cause delays? Did it increase
manufacturing costs? We have not looked at that.
Chairman Collins. OK, thank you. Mr. Garratt, before I
yield to my colleague for his first round of questions, let me
just ask you one final question for this round, and that is,
who was the individual at FEMA who made the decision to
purchase nearly $850 million of manufactured housing?
Mr. Garratt. Madam Chairman, I approved that decision. I
believe that the Director of Recovery, at that time Danny
Craig, also approved that decision. And we communicated our
approval of that decision to our procurement officials.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Pryor.
Senator Pryor. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Let me follow up
on that. So you were involved in the decisionmaking process on
the manufactured homes?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Senator Pryor. And one thing, as I understood, that you
said a few minutes ago, was that you set up the Housing Area
Command. Did that system work pretty well and is that something
you would replicate in future hurricanes?
Mr. Garratt. I am not sure that we are going to replicate
that plan in future hurricanes. We had a mixed response in
terms of how well it worked. My personal opinion, Senator, is
that the plan did a bang-up job, for the reasons that I talked
about in my testimony, and that they could hit the ground
running immediately after landfall without interfering with the
immediate life-saving response and recovery efforts and begin
scouting and finding candidate group site locations, as well as
identifying what was available, so that we could start rolling
in resources just as soon as possible. In that regard, I think
they did a pretty good job.
Senator Pryor. I want to ask about that. The Housing Area
Command at some point ordered these homes, and you approved
that. Who made that recommendation to you?
Mr. Garratt. The Housing Area Commander.
Senator Pryor. And who is that?
Mr. Garratt. His name was Brad Gair.
Senator Pryor. So he made that recommendation, and you
approved it, and then you started ordering homes. If you can
just walk the Committee through that process and whether you
were working through a contractor or a middleman. Explain to us
how that played out.
Mr. Garratt. I am probably going to have to rely on my
Chief Procurement Officer to help me out with this, but I can
at least bring it from the field level. Brad Gair is the
Housing Area Commander. We asked him to be very aggressive out
in the field, to lean far forward to identify what those
requirements were and to press hard to start getting the
resources into the area to address what we knew was going to be
a pretty compelling housing situation. He did begin to
identify----
Senator Pryor. Let me interrupt just for a second. In terms
of timing, are we talking about before, during, or after
Hurricane Katrina?
Mr. Garratt. We set them up before Hurricane Katrina and
gave him his marching orders before Hurricane Katrina ever hit.
What I just described was his mission, essentially, to do that.
So I'm not sure how long, how many days it was after
Hurricane Katrina, but I am certain it was a very short period
of time after landfall, if not during landfall, that he began
communicating what the requirements were, in terms of travel
trailers. And at one point, I think it was--said something to
the effect of, ``We need to order these things, continue
rolling these things down here and order them until I say
stop.''
Senator Pryor. And are we talking about travel trailers or
are you talking about the mobile homes?
Mr. Garratt. Both.
Senator Pryor. OK.
Mr. Garratt. Our strategy is always to maximize use of
travel trailers rather than mobile homes. Travel trailers we
can put with far more ease on an individual's private property.
Mobile homes do not have that capability. Mobile homes are used
for group site locations, large families, extended families,
and for individuals with disabilities, for example. So travel
trailers are our preferred mobile housing option.
Senator Pryor. And not to get off track, but what I am
really asking about is the process by which they were procured.
Did you contact the manufacturers directly? Did you look for an
independent contractor? Did you have a series of contractors
who had expertise in this? That is what I am asking.
Mr. Garratt. We worked that through our Chief Procurement
Officer, sir. We communicated the requirements to our
procurement office, and our procurement office has to use those
requirements.
Senator Pryor. And that procurement office is in
Washington?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Senator Pryor. And what did they do? I know you made the
request or made the order, and then what happened? What did
they do? I guess I am trying to get a handle on how much
control FEMA had of what you received and what you purchased.
Mr. Garratt. With the permission of the Chairman, I would
like to ask Patricia English to join me at the table?
Chairman Collins. Certainly.
Mr. Garratt. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Just for the record, would you state your
name and your position, please?
Ms. English. My name is Patricia English, and I am Chief
Procurement Officer for FEMA. At the time we received the
request, we did a couple of things. We initially mobilized----
Senator Pryor. Did you receive the request before, during,
or after the storm?
Ms. English. I think we received it--I'm not really sure.
Mr. Garratt. I think it was immediately afterward.
Ms. English. I think it was, too.
Senator Pryor. All right. Go ahead. I'm sorry, I did not
mean to interrupt.
Ms. English. After we received the request, we did a couple
of things. First of all, we mobilized the FEMA contract
specialists to help procure these in a very fast manner.
Senator Pryor. Now, are those government employees or are
those contractors?
Ms. English. No, government employees.
Senator Pryor. OK.
Ms. English. All FEMA officials, with the assistance from
subcontracting officials from Department of Homeland Security
Headquarters Procurement Office. We did two things: One, we had
a group of folks that went directly to the manufacturers with
our specifications, to secure bids so they could start
manufacturing units as fast as possible. In the interim, we had
another group of individuals who started calling the dealers to
find out what was available on the lots. And dealers started
faxing in their specifications, their estimated costs, and so
forth.
What we did at that point is we went for the lowest offer
and just kept buying off the lot, to the extent that we could,
as the manufactured units were coming on-line.
Senator Pryor. Now, would you call that a competitive bid
process?
Ms. English. The manufactured units was clearly a
competitive bid process.
Senator Pryor. And how long were the manufacturers given to
respond to your request?
Ms. English. I don't know the exact time, but I can tell
you it was probably around 5 days.
Senator Pryor. OK.
Ms. English. It was a very quick response.
Senator Pryor. Keep going, I'm sorry.
Ms. English. So the manufacturers clearly was a competitive
bid. The off-the-lot, although it wasn't what you would call
formal competition, we did seek prices, we did try to negotiate
discounts, and we did award to vendors offering the lowest
prices first.
Senator Pryor. Maybe I am misunderstanding this, but my
understanding is that there was a middleman or contractor or
set of contractors involved in the purchasing of these homes.
Is that not right?
Ms. English. To my knowledge, I am not aware of a
middleman. Now, there was a recent purchase that we had in the
State of Louisiana where we worked through a middleman, but to
my knowledge, we went straight to the manufacturers and to off-
the-lot dealers.
Senator Pryor. Are you familiar with how FEMA used to do
its mobile home and trailer purchases under James Lee Witt? Are
you familiar with how they did it then?
Mr. Skinner. Yes.
Senator Pryor. As I understand it, what they would do is
they would solicit the industry long before any storm came, on
a competitive basis, and sort of have an open contract. I don't
know exactly what they call the process. And then, once the
need was identified, they would then contact the manufacturers,
is that correct? Do you know how they did it?
Ms. English. No, we did not necessarily do it that way
under James Lee Witt. What happened was we did do a full,
competitive competition, but we did not have contracts sitting
on the shelf waiting to use at the time of the hurricane.
Senator Pryor. Well, how would you do the full, competitive
bidding?
Ms. English. Very quick, same way we did it this time.
Senator Pryor. I may have had some wrong information there,
and I'd like to get back to you on it.
Let's see, I have another question. If I may, Mr. Garratt,
on the question that Congressman Ross asked about the 3,000 or
maybe 5,000 houses--where are they going and when will the
people who need housing actually get the 3,000 to 5,000 houses
over the next few months? Where are they going and what is the
time frame on people actually using them?
Mr. Garratt. Also a very good question, Senator. That is
being worked up now between our Deputy Director for Gulf Coast
Recovery working with the Joint Field Office in the State and
locals to identify that. As I indicated, the plan is to bring
these mobile homes into fringe areas within the floodplain
where--following the eight-step process would require only a
modest amount of elevation, and we can do that in a cost-
effective way. What the Deputy Director is doing right now is
working with them to identify those sites and locations where
they would agree to support that.
Based on initial indications from the field, we think that
it can support up to an additional 3,000 mobile homes, but we
don't have all of those sites identified at this point.
Additionally, another couple of thousand, as indicated, will be
rolling out of Hope, going to Edison, New Jersey, to a site we
have there and to Cumberland, Maryland, to a site we have
there, and hopefully to a site on the West Coast, to support
potential disaster operations in different parts of the
country.
Senator Pryor. So as I understand it then, you have a plan
to remove them from Hope, but not necessarily to deliver them
to the people that need them?
Mr. Garratt. We will be delivering them to the people that
need them when they need them should a disaster occur in a part
of the country that we have re-staged these units to. That is
except for the 3,000 that we plan to push from Hope down to
Louisiana.
Senator Pryor. That is all I have at this time, Madam
Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Garratt, I want to clear
up an issue where your testimony seems to be in conflict with
that of the Inspector General's at a previous hearing that we
held which touched on this issue, and that is the condition of
the manufactured homes that are being stored here. At a
previous hearing, we saw some photographs which seemed to
indicate that some of the homes were sinking in the mud in a
way that is causing them to warp or causing some structural
problems, but your testimony here this morning was very clear
that you felt that those reports were erroneous, and you said
that every home is ``mission ready.'' I want to try to clear up
this issue by asking Mr. Skinner whether he has changed his
judgment upon further investigation. Before I do that, if, in
fact, the homes are in good shape being stored on this site,
why is FEMA spending $4.2 million to lay down gravel?
Mr. Garratt. A couple of reasons regarding the question we
are on. Right now, when it does rain in Hope, we do get pooled
water there. A crush and run surface will be more stable. We've
got areas on the Hope compound where--to address, for example,
the warping or bowing issue. We may have a mobile home that is
perched on a rise, and it will, if you drive by that, appear to
be bowed, and in fact, it is. It doesn't affect the efficacy of
that unit, it is still completely usable, but because we've got
an 80-foot unit that is perched on jack stands over that
expanse that is uneven, you will see that sort of bowing.
So what we are interested in doing is creating a more
environmentally stable environment for those mobile homes since
we may be keeping some of these mobile homes here for some
period of time. As we have indicated, we want to maintain at
least 5,000 of these mobile homes there for the 2006 hurricane
season. My hope is that we have no opportunity to use those in
the 2006 hurricane season. However, if that in fact does not
happen and we have a catastrophe and a requirement to do that,
we want those things to be stored in the best way possible. And
our logistics folks have told us that providing this crush and
run does provide surface stability for the long-term surface
maintenance environment that we want these mobile homes to
have.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Skinner, is a bowed mobile home
mission ready?
Mr. Skinner. It is my understanding it can be made mission
ready, but I am not an expert on the manufactured homes. You
may want to ask the expert on the next panel. When we made our
initial visit here--we made two visits, I think, in January and
February, and it was right after a rainstorm. Like today, we
did not plan for a rainstorm. We were out there again this
morning. We did observe that they were sitting in open fields,
and we took photos where some of the hitches on which the
trailers were being stored were beginning to sink into the mud.
We also observed that they were beginning to bow because
they were not placed on jacks. If they just bow slightly, that
is not going to create a problem. But if we do not store them
properly, they could deteriorate and be damaged. That is what
we were told.
So we made recommendations: One, if you are going to
maintain these things here, then you need to put them on a
stable surface, and, two, if you are going to store them for an
extended period, you need to store them as recommended by the
manufacturer, and that is on jacks. We went out there this
morning, and in fact, they are laying gravel as we speak, and
they are putting in the jacks as we speak. Not all of them are
complete, but they are in that process.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Skinner, do you have any concerns
about the monitoring of the project that you have just
described, laying the gravel bed?
Mr. Skinner. The actual monitoring?
Chairman Collins. Yes.
Mr. Skinner. No one has brought any problems to our
attention.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Finally, Mr. Skinner, the
hurricane season, as I mentioned, begins June 1, 2006. How
prepared do you think FEMA is for this year's hurricane season?
Mr. Skinner. I really do not want to speculate. I can say
that there is very aggressive action ongoing right now to put
us in a position where we are better prepared than we were last
year. For example, there is hiring of additional contracting
officers and contracting technical representatives. There is
some very intense training going on and many exercises going
on--in the hurricane regions--so that people will better
understand the national response plan, understand the role of
the PFO, the Principal Federal Officer, and the FCO, the
Federal Coordinating Officer. So there are steps that are being
taken in a very fast and aggressive way to help us be better
prepared.
However, will we be better prepared to handle another
Hurricane Katrina? I would not want to speculate. I can say
also that the Department is working very well now with DOD, and
that is very important, defining what their role will be if we
have something that catastrophic.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Garratt, one final
question for you. Part of being prepared, and part of keeping
down costs, is to have in place prior to the hurricane season
contracts that have been competitively awarded and that you can
take off the shelf and use if need be. Initially, Secretary
Chertoff assured me that there would be competitively awarded
national individual assistance contracts in place prior to June
1, 2006, the start of the hurricane season. Does FEMA still
intend to meet that goal?
Mr. Garratt. FEMA still intends to meet the goal of having
individual assistance, technical assistance contracts, in place
as soon as we can get those in place. I do not believe we are
going to meet our target goal of June 1, 2006. The competitive
bid process--we have encountered some delays in accelerating
that process, and as a result, we are probably looking at some
time after July 1 before we are able to award those contracts.
However, in the interim, we recognize that we have a gap,
in terms of being able to provide housing assistance or
executing a housing mission, so we have coordinated with the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
has performed this mission for us in the past prior to the use
of the IA TACs last year, and the Army Corps of Engineers is
prepared to execute that mission and provide any housing
support for us in that interim period while we work to complete
the awarding of the new IA TAC contracts, which again, we
expect to have completed certainly well before the end of the
hurricane season, but probably, again, not by June 1, 2006.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Pryor.
Senator Pryor. Mr. Skinner, you mentioned in your testimony
a few moments ago that you hope to have a report prepared by
late summer or early fall?
Mr. Skinner. Yes. In the September time frame is what I was
looking at.
Senator Pryor. And what is that, a set of recommendations?
Mr. Skinner. We are doing an assessment right now of FEMA's
housing plans and its policies and procedures with regard to
Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Wilma, with the
objective of identifying the gaps and problems, and making
recommendations to address those problems.
Senator Pryor. All right. Is it consistent or inconsistent
in your mind that the Inspector General's office is in the
process of doing this report, making recommendations, listing
out your findings, but at the same time, and in an
uncoordinated fashion it seems to me, FEMA is planning on
moving many of these mobile homes from Hope to various parts
around the country. Is that inconsistent in your mind or is----
Mr. Skinner. Well, we have not drawn any conclusions yet,
but that particular issue of how would we use some 16,000
mobile homes that are currently in our inventory is something,
I think, that requires further study. We have already made some
recommendations informally.
Senator Pryor. And I know that in a few minutes you are
going to step down. I would like for you to keep chart 4
handy,\1\ because I may use that with another witness here in a
few minutes. Are you familiar with the process that was gone
through on these mobile homes here in Hope, in terms of the
purchase of them?
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\1\ The chart referred to by Mr. Skinner appears in the Appenxix on
page 74.
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Mr. Skinner. Beforehand?
Senator Pryor. Before they were purchased. To purchase the
mobile homes here and deliver them here, are you familiar with
that process?
Mr. Skinner. Not in such detail as Ms. English.
Senator Pryor. Let me ask about the jacks. You have
identified that some of these need jacks. Are those only the
units that are over 60 feet?
Mr. Skinner. Yes.
Senator Pryor. Just the shorter ones do not need those?
Mr. Skinner. That is what I am told. That is correct.
Senator Pryor. And as I understand it, some mobile home
parks, etc., do not like these longer mobile homes. Do you know
anything about that?
Mr. Skinner. I'm sorry?
Senator Pryor. They cannot accommodate the longer mobile
homes?
Mr. Skinner. Most of the traditional mobile home parks
cannot accommodate them. We cannot place them on the pads
because the cement pads on which they rest are too small.
Senator Pryor. Right.
Mr. Skinner. So that is the dilemma that we have, or that
FEMA has, how do they place them on the pads, because they
require larger pads.
Senator Pryor. Do you know why FEMA ordered the longer
homes that would not fit on the mobile home park pads?
Mr. Skinner. It is my understanding that the order was
given to buy all mobile homes, as many as you can buy. There
were a lot of mobile homes, and a lot of travel trailers as
well, that were delivered to FEMA that should not have been
accepted. And we probably should not have bought those larger
mobile homes.
Senator Pryor. If I may, Mr. Garratt, let me ask you, you
mentioned that some of these homes, these 3,000 homes are
moving back out to various staging areas around the country.
Did you mention some were going to Maryland?
Mr. Garratt. Cumberland, Maryland.
Senator Pryor. As I understand it, and maybe I am wrong on
this, some of the homes were manufactured in that area and then
transported to Hope. Do you know?
Mr. Garratt. I can't verify that, Senator, but we can
certainly find out and get that information to you.
Senator Pryor. Let me ask this. Do you know how much FEMA
pays per mile to move these homes?
Mr. Garratt. Ask Ron Goins.
Chairman Collins. Again, if you could identify yourself so
the court reporter has your name, and also your position?
Mr. Goins. I'm Ron Goins, and I am Chief of Support
Services Section for Logistics.
Senator Pryor. And do you know how much FEMA pays to move
these homes--is it paid per mile, or how does that work?
Mr. Goins. Well, a lot of the transportation costs are
rolled up into the purchases, but when we do our own internal
moves, or if we have a commercial hauler, it is approximately
$1.50 per travel trailer per mile, and approximately $4.50 per
mobile home.
Senator Pryor. Per mile?
Mr. Goins. Yes, sir.
Senator Pryor. So if you move them to Maryland, that is
about 1,000 miles. That is pretty pricey to move one mobile
home that distance. Let me ask this, also, Mr. Garratt, if I
may, and that is in your opening statement you mentioned that
there are 115,000 manufactured homes, I think you said, that
were ready for occupancy in the region already, provided by
FEMA? Tell me what you said? What was that 115,000 figure I
heard?
Mr. Garratt. There were 115,000 travel trailers, mobile
homes, total, that have been set up in the Gulf Region.
Senator Pryor. How many are travel trailers and how many
mobile homes?
Mr. Garratt. Let me check and see if I have that.
Senator Pryor. And people are occupying those right now?
Mr. Garratt. I think the occupied figures for those are
something less than that, in the neighborhood of 110,000.
Mr. Skinner. We looked at this, at the status, this past
Monday. For mobile homes, I think it was closer to 10,000, and
I think it was about 79,000 travel trailers that are currently
occupied, 17,000 that are ready to be occupied, and I don't
have the exact figure, but I think it was 23,000, or something
like that, trailers that are ready to be moved and are
available for occupancy.
Mr. Garratt. I'm sorry, Senator, your question to me again
was?
Senator Pryor. Well, I was asking about the 115,000 figure
that you had----
Mr. Garratt. Right.
Senator Pryor [continuing]. And the question I had was how
many are mobile homes and how many are the so-called travel
trailers. And it sounds like Mr. Skinner has given me a rough
breakdown. Is that consistent with what you have?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir.
Mr. Skinner. And those are the figures that FEMA gave me
last Monday.
Senator Pryor. But it still sounds like there is a
percentage that are not--is that just because of paperwork or
is that because we cannot find locations, or what is that?
Mr. Garratt. It is a combination of issues, sir. For
example, when a contractor is establishing a group site and
making units available for occupancy on a group site, they may
be available for occupancy, but we do not allow anyone on that
group site to inhabit any of those trailers until they are all
ready for occupancy because of the construction that is going
on and because of the safety issues. So we may have multiple
ready-for-occupancy units, but it may also be a question if it
is being placed on an individual's private property that a
contractor will say this is ready for occupancy, but it is
awaiting a certification, the City of Hope to come on and make
that certification, that it is OK. So a number of different
reasons contribute to that, to that delta between ready for
occupancy and occupancy.
Senator Pryor. All right, Mr. Garratt, this is my last
question--Congressman Ross and others have talked about how
there are apparently many parishes down in Louisiana--I have
heard eight, I have heard more--I do not know the exact number,
that have done something on a local level to waive any sort of
restrictions they might have on mobile homes to allow your FEMA
mobile homes to be placed in those parishes. Senator Collins
mentioned some of the issues in New Orleans. Let me ask this:
In your opening statement you said that there was ``widespread
resistance'' placing these mobile homes down in the Gulf Coast
area, but isn't it true that many of the parishes have waived
their restrictions and are allowing these to come in?
Mr. Garratt. Sir, I am not aware that any parishes have
waived the floodplain restrictions for any of the mobile homes.
Senator Pryor. The floodplain restriction is your
restriction.
Mr. Garratt. That is correct.
Senator Pryor. Well, I mean they cannot waive that; I am
saying they have local ordinances or whatever they may call
them in Louisiana, I do not know the State law, but they have
ordinances that say no mobile homes in this part of the city or
this part of the county, whatever that may be, and apparently,
they have taken steps to waive those. Are you familiar with
that?
Mr. Garratt. In some instances, we have had some parishes
that have indicated that they are willing to take some of these
on. Those form part of that 3,000 that we expect to move from
Hope down to Louisiana. In many cases, these are going to
require some rather extensive site preparation, but yes, we
have made some inroads in some cases. Again, we are also
continuing to encounter some resistance in some cases, but that
portion that you referred to is calculated into that 3,000
figure that we are working.
Senator Pryor. What about in the City of New Orleans
itself? Are they--New Orleans Parish, are they resistant?
Mr. Garratt. We have had some issues in New Orleans Parish.
Senator Pryor. Are some of the homes going into New Orleans
Parish?
Mr. Garratt. Yes, sir. We have begun some site development
there, and we have already spent, at least in the case of one
site, over $1 million on the site development, and we are at
the point of virtually beginning to occupy those trailers, and
we have proceeded to do that.
Senator Pryor. Do you know how many homes have made it into
Orleans Parish?
Mr. Garratt. I can get that number for you, sir. I do not
have that.
Senator Pryor. I believe that is all I have. Thank you,
Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Garratt, I know I promised
that I had asked you the last question, but the question my
colleague just asked you gives rise to another one in my mind.
The Committee has been told that FEMA has met most of the
requests for travel trailers in Mississippi and in Alabama, but
that 60 percent of the requests in Louisiana have not been
satisfied. Is that an accurate assessment?
Mr. Garratt. Madam Chairman, I'm not sure what that 60
percent represents. If it represents the number of individuals
who are currently in Louisiana, for example, in hotels and
motels, living with family and friends, and are waiting for a
travel trailer there, I think that figure is probably very much
in play there. It represents, perhaps, individuals who are
across the United States, based on wherever they were evacuated
to or where they've migrated to, and have indicated that they
would like a travel trailer or mobile home. That may be after--
--
Senator Collins. I am trying to figure out why most of the
requests from Mississippi have been satisfied and most of the
requests from Louisiana, according to the data that I have,
have not been. I am trying to determine whether that is the
problem we discussed with local officials not allowing the
placement of homes in certain areas. But if most of these we
are talking about are travel trailers, which are different,
obviously, from the manufactured homes, is there a disparity,
and if so, why?
Mr. Garratt. There is a disparity, ma'am, and that
disparity is related just to the size of the population that
requires housing. Alabama had a much smaller population that
required housing than Mississippi, and Mississippi the same for
Louisiana. Mississippi's projected needs total were 39,000
travel trailers and mobile homes, and we are virtually there.
We've got 39,000. Louisiana's projected total needs were
approaching 100,000 travel trailers and mobile homes, so we are
not quite there yet. There is still a delta between that, and
that is what causes the difference between Louisiana and
Mississippi.
Senator Collins. I guess you can see our concern, even
frustration, when we flew in today and see thousands of
manufactured homes ready to go here in Hope and then we keep
receiving the pleas for assistance for housing from individuals
from Louisiana that FEMA cannot seem to meet. That is the
frustration that we are seeing, when here you have the homes
that are so desperately needed. What is the barrier?
Mr. Garratt. The principal barriers right now, as
indicated, in employing these mobile homes in Southern
Louisiana are the issues of the floodplain restrictions and the
issues we have been running into regarding the group sites. But
we are attacking those. I mean, we recognize that is an issue.
We recognize, as Mr. Skinner indicated, that we need to pursue
some outside-the-box solutions to some of these issues, and we
are actively doing that.
We have the authority, or may have the authority, to donate
these units to States and to locals, providing their use for
disaster purposes. And we are actively working with the States
to identify methods for potentially donating these mobile homes
or--again, provided that they are used for a disaster purpose.
That would enable these to be used for purposes other than we
are constrained by under the Stafford Act.
Our Deputy Director for Gulf Coast Recovery, Mr. Jamieson,
is actively working with the States to determine if there are
other potential solutions for the use of mobile homes in both
Mississippi and in Louisiana. And we are expecting Mr. Jamieson
to come back with some recommendations fairly soon on methods
that--that I do not want to necessarily go into at this point
because we just have not fleshed these out fully, but I have
every reason to believe that we may have an opportunity in the
very near future to begin using some of these mobile homes in
an innovative way in the affected area.
Chairman Collins. I thank you for your testimony and for
being here today. I feel, however, as if we have come full
circle. We are back to the floodplain regulations, which raises
the question why they were purchased in the first place if they
cannot be used in this area. It seems to me that we have to
come up with better housing solutions that avoid that problem
in the future. It is just a tragedy that nearly 8 months after
people have been displaced, we cannot seem to match up victims
in need of housing with housing that is here in Hope. We stand
ready to work with you to help achieve a solution to this
problem and also to ensure it does not happen again in the
future.
I would hope as you pursue these innovative approaches that
you have alluded to that you will share your thoughts and
advice with the Committee. Mr. Skinner, I would like you to do
so as well.
Again, I want to thank you both for being here today and
for helping to advance our knowledge.
I am now going to call forward our final panel of
witnesses. Mayor Dennis Ramsey was first elected to the Board
of Directors of the City of Hope in 1978 and has served as
Mayor since 1993. J.D. Harper serves as the Executive Directive
of the Arkansas Manufactured Housing Association.
Mayor Ramsey, being an elected official has its privileges,
and one is that you get to go first.
Mayor Ramsey. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
TESTIMONY OF THE HON. DENNIS RAMSEY,\1\ MAYOR, CITY OF HOPE
Mayor Ramsey. Again, Madam Chairman, I'd like to welcome
you and your staff to Arkansas, especially the City of Hope. It
has been an honor to have you here.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mayor Ramsey appears in the Appendix
on page 75.
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Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Mayor Ramsey. Of course, Senator Pryor, it is always nice
to have you back in Hope, Arkansas.
Senator Pryor. Thank you, Mayor.
Mayor Ramsey. Senator Pryor noted a while ago that no
Senate hearings at this time have been held at Hope, and I
think you are entirely correct. This is our first one, and
maybe it will not be our last one, but it is a unique
experience for our city. And we appreciate the opportunity to
display our college and the work that they have done.
Prior to Hurricane Katrina striking the Gulf Coast, several
hundred people evacuated to Hope, Arkansas. When it became
evident the devastation to the Coast Region would be
significant, as a community we came to the realization that the
stay for many of the evacuees would be prolonged. Our
community, as many other communities across our State, began a
grass roots effort to become a source of strength, both
emotionally and financially, for these guests. Funds were
raised and distributed; lodging provided; twice daily meals
served; job fairs held; and friendships extended. All was done
with no concern for reimbursement. It united us as a community
and introduced us to many new friends with whom we still
correspond. Of course, this continued weeks later with
Hurricane Rita.
On or about Saturday, September 24, I receive a phone call
from Robert Hoban, who identified himself as a representative
of FEMA. He stated that FEMA had let or was in the process of
letting contracts to purchase upwards of 20,000 manufactured
homes, or mobile homes. The staging and distribution point for
these homes was to be Red River Army Depot in Texarkana.
However, much of the affected acreage over there contained
trees and other vegetation, so the cost of clearing and
preparing to store them on this acreage was prohibitive. On
this day, he and other individuals had already visited our
airport property and thought it would be ideal to store several
thousand mobile homes here at our airport temporarily. Mr.
Hoban wanted to know how much acreage and if the City would
lease the property to FEMA and also about the possibility of
closing the entire airport.
I told Mr. Hoban, as Mayor, I did not have that authority
to make a decision, and there were several issues that would
have to be addressed: Approval of the Federal Aviation
Authority, since this is--and still is--an active airport; our
visiting with the Arkansas Aeronautics Department; consulting
with our Airport Advisory Board and local pilots; obviously,
approval by a vote by the Hope City Board of Directors. Closing
all runways was not an option as preservation of the airport
functions was of primary importance. I contacted City Manager
Catherine Cook and told her of our conversation.
On Monday, September 26, 2005, I received a call from a
representative of the Government Services Administration,
Dorothy Keisler. She wanted to fax a lease for our
consideration. I told her essentially the same conversation I
had with Mr. Hoban and that it would be premature as I had no
authority to negotiate a lease, but I felt confident the City
would do all it could to accommodate the request.
The City Manager began contacting our airport engineers,
FAA, Arkansas Aeronautics, the City Board members, and local
airport groups. We also had ongoing conversations with FEMA
representatives, informing them we had approximately 453 acres.
Per their calculations, they could place approximately 13,000
mobile homes on the site.
We informed them of the soil conditions present at the
airport. This is an old army airport built in 1941 with three
runways, two of which are still active. The third one has been
closed permanently. The airport was constructed on what was
then very fertile farmland. We informed FEMA that, when wet,
this soil became very spongy, and during periods of rain,
ingress and egress would be very limited, i.e., become stuck in
the mud, but no one ever inferred that the mobile homes would
sink in the ground.
On Tuesday, October 4, 2005, Mr. Hoban addressed the Hope
City Board of Directors and requested leasing the 453 acres of
airport property for 2 years with an option to renew for two
additional one-year periods. The reason for the two options is
that when the units are recovered from the Gulf Coast area by
FEMA, they will be returned to Hope for minor refurbishing. The
Board recommended a lease price of $25,000 per month.\1\
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\1\ Supporting documents submitted by Mayor Ramsey appear in the
Appendix on page 78.
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On October 7, 2005, the lease with the GSA on behalf of
FEMA was signed.
During the week of October 9, 2005, mobile homes actually
began arriving at the Hope Airport.
On October 21, 2005, at a special called board meeting, Mr.
Hoban again addressed the City Board. He stated there were
approximately 400 mobile homes housed at the airport on
available runway space and that FEMA was interested in
establishing a geotech fabric and gravel, called crush and run,
in 50-acre parcels to stage additional mobile homes. The Board
agreed to the proposal.
By November 1, 2005, there were approximately 1,500 units
at the airport, but no crush and run had been laid except for
the road at the south end of the property.
Mr. Hoban subsequently stated that FEMA desired to develop
170 acres and possibly up to 290 total acres with Geotech
fabric and four to six inches of SB-2/Class 7 crushed stone
applied over the fabric. At the meeting, local FEMA personnel
thought the amount would only include about 97 acres. The GSA
amended this contract from the original 170 plus additional 120
acres. The Board also asked if it would be possible for the
crosswind runway to be reopened. This work, to my knowledge, is
currently under construction.
To my knowledge, the maximum number of mobile homes staged
at the Hope Airport property was 10,777, and currently the
number is around 10,000.
FEMA has on several occasions told representatives of the
City, as well as members of the House and Senate, on various
occasions, there's a real possibility that this site may become
a permanent staging area for FEMA.
I'd just like to say in closing the local FEMA
representatives, as well as Mr. Hoban, have been cooperative,
responsive to our questions and concerns when voiced, and have
responded to them promptly when asked.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Harper.
TESTIMONY OF J.D. HARPER,\2\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ARKANSAS
MANUFACTURED HOUSING ASSOCIATION
Mr. Harper. Good afternoon, Madam Chairman, and welcome to
Arkansas.
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\2\ The prepared statement of Mr. Harper appears in the Appendix on
page 88.
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Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Harper. Good to see you here. Senator Pryor, it is good
to see you. It is a great honor to be invited to testify before
this Committee at this hearing today.
My name is J.D. Harper, and I am Executive Director of the
Arkansas Manufactured Housing Association. Our trade
association represents businesses with an interest in the
manufactured home industry: Builders, retailers, transporters,
installers, finance and insurance companies, and other
businesses. Since our inception in 1967, it has been our goal
to provide quality, affordable housing to the people of this
State.
At this time, I would like to make it clear that my
testimony reflects the views of the Arkansas Manufactured
Housing Association and should not be construed as a statement
on behalf of the entire industry. The comments that I am going
to pass on to you today are based solely upon the deliberations
and discussions of our Board of Directors.
It is my understanding I have been invited to testify on
issues related to disaster housing, with manufactured housing
units in the forefront, especially the homes staged here at
Hope. And the invitation said the things that we were asked to
look at were: Procurement, installation, maintenance, future
use, and deactivation and/or disposal. I have arranged my
comments in this order, and I will do my best to address each
issue.
Again, of course, I would like to say that our industry was
deeply touched and our thoughts and prayers went out to the
people whose lives were forever changed after Hurricane Katrina
hit the Gulf Coast, and our thoughts and prayers are with them
still today as recovery efforts continue. We also believe that
another thing was forever changed; the relief and recovery
efforts that you see from Federal, State, and local
governments. And it is our sincere hope that the successes that
have been seen and the failures that we have had since the
recovery effort started are something we can all learn from,
and we can create a better response mechanism in the future.
Having said that, I will take a few minutes to talk about
the procurement issue. FEMA has long viewed manufactured
housing as a resource for emergency housing relief in the
aftermath of disasters. Our industry believes that manufactured
housing can continue to be a major source and an integral part
of an emergency housing plan.
I would like to recognize the efforts of our industry,
particularly our manufacturers and our transporters for their
efforts and their response to the demand for emergency housing
in the wake of the storms. We responded immediately, fulfilling
FEMA's requests for thousands of homes built to their exacting
specifications and delivering those units to staging areas that
were designated by FEMA in a very timely manner. In a number of
cases, participating builders found it necessary to suspend
their normal production of homes for retail inventory and
custom-designed units for waiting home buyers in order to
produce FEMA-approved units for disaster relief efforts,
creating major disruptions in the normal course of business and
in the normal supply of manufactured housing.
In recent history, we believe that FEMA has greatly reduced
or eliminated the inventory of manufactured home units being
held for such use and has gone with their preference of
ordering manufactured homes through GSE-approved third-party
contractors or directly from manufacturers for use in disaster-
stricken areas on an as-needed basis.
According to Inspector General Skinner's testimony before
this Committee on February 13, FEMA purchased 24,967
manufactured homes and 1,295 modular homes for use as emergency
disaster housing.
Manufactured home units built for FEMA in 2005 were built
to very strict specifications. In a Request for Quotes dated
Thursday, September 8, 2005, producers were given structural
design requirements for the houses, including the size--that
they would be 60 feet long by 14 feet in width; the floor plan
with the number of bedrooms, three, and the number of
bathrooms, one; the appliances, all electric, range,
refrigerator/freezer; furnishings, they would be fully
furnished with a dinette set for six; interior and exterior
requirements, including no carpet throughout the unit and vinyl
siding on the exterior; roof load, thermal zone, and wind zone
requirements; and a structural design requirement that was
unique in that the homes were built for multiple installations
and removals. Proposals from interested producers were required
to be received no later than 3 p.m. the following day,
September 9, 2005.
It is our understanding that efforts are currently underway
to revise and review the construction specifications that FEMA
has used in the past. We support the review and revision of
those specifications in order to simplify the procurement
process. Our organization would encourage FEMA to revisit its
former policy of using stand-by contracts for the purchase and
procurement of emergency housing in future disasters.
I have been asked on many occasions if FEMA paid too much
for the homes which they ordered for hurricane relief. Most of
these questions have included some sort of comparison between
the average price of the stock unit that is held in inventory
by retailers and average prices of FEMA units, based on
dividing the total dollar amount that was spent, the $800 and
some odd million, we were told, by the number of homes received
by FEMA. I believe it is important to understand that units
meeting the specifications that were released on September 8,
2005, did not exist in Arkansas prior to that date. These homes
were built specifically for this request, and any comparison to
the price of stock units is an unfair comparison. I do believe
that if the homes sitting on the airport runway here in Hope
are not used for the purpose for which they were ordered or
used in some other public interest, then any price paid by the
government for these homes was too high.
I also believe the question is not necessarily how much was
paid for the homes, but how many homes were ordered. I believe
if there were only 500 homes waiting we would not be having
this hearing today. In the hours following the hurricanes,
between 2004 Hurricane Charlie and 2005 Hurricanes Katrina,
Rita, and Wilma, our industry, including my office, was asked
to identify available inventory by the Department of Homeland
Security and by FEMA for use in the disaster areas. In both
instances, FEMA instead elected to order new manufactured
houses built to their specifications, rather than purchase
manufactured home inventories off the lot, except for a very
small percentage of some homes that are here at Hope.
A lot of the testimony you have heard talks about off-the-
lot purchases. For the most part, those were travel trailer
purchases, not manufactured homes. Inasmuch as I believe our
business wants to help in the aftermath of disasters, I do not
believe we are going to participate in future efforts to gather
that inventory list from our retailers because we have not seen
any real instance that FEMA is going to purchase retail
inventory. We feel that FEMA is going to continue the process
of ordering new product if it is needed.
Federal and State authorities did work together, though, to
work out the delivery of the FEMA units. State transportation
authorities waived permit requirements and other restrictions
to get homes moved very quickly, and we certainly feel like
that was an example of a success with the States working
together to make it happen. However, we found that when the
waivers began to expire and enforcement mechanisms resumed,
some of the out-of-state manufacturers were unaware and some of
the transporters were unaware. We would encourage those
entities to work together to better keep the lines of
communication open with our transporters and manufacturers.
The units began arriving at Hope within days. With the
industry, the media, and the public focused on the delivery of
emergency housing to those people left homeless in the Gulf
Coast region, the number of homes delivered to the staging
areas, specifically Hope, began to swell into the thousands,
with relatively few ever moving on to displaced victims. The
aerial photos of manufactured homes sitting on the runways here
at Hope became synonymous with failures in FEMA's emergency
housing program.
As far as why some of these houses are still here, I think
it comes into the installation of these homes, and I group the
installation into three basic areas--local restrictions against
the placement of manufactured homes, the floodplain issue, and
the success of the travel trailer program. I think these have
all impacted the reason that only a small number of
manufactured homes have been used as emergency housing.
FEMA's own policies state that travel trailers and
manufactured homes are used only as a last resort, after all
other rental housing options are exhausted. And in the case of
manufactured homes, FEMA's policy states that occupancy permits
must be obtained and local zoning and building codes must be
followed.
As far as local building codes go, and zoning ordinances,
many cities use zoning ordinances to restrict the placement of
manufactured homes in good times, not only in disaster times,
or to limit their placement to mobile home parks within those
communities. Before the 2005 hurricanes, FEMA had most recently
utilized large numbers of manufactured homes as emergency
housing in the aftermath of the Florida hurricanes. FEMA's
method of operation there included the acquisition of large
tracts of land, the development of streets, utilities, and
other infrastructure, and the delivery of hundreds or even
thousands of manufactured homes to centralized sites, which I
believe Mr. Garratt called ``group sites,'' since known as
``Charleyvilles'' or ``FEMA towns.'' What had been envisioned
as short-term emergency housing soon became longer-term housing
solutions for displaced victims.
FEMA's requirements for the development of such ``group
sites'' often recognize that the process does take time. As a
matter of fact, a press release on FEMA's website acknowledges
such in saying, ``The creation of housing facilities is like
building a small town from scratch. It may take months.''
The scope and the nature of the development of such
centralized sites, ``group sites'' as they have been called,
often breeds public resistance, the ``not-in-my-back-yard''
syndrome, or NIMBY syndrome, and such public resistance only
reinforces the prejudices inherent to exclusive zoning
ordinances that act as barriers to affordable housing.
Our association would respectfully recommend that the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, FEMA, and State
and local governments review their existing policies, their
guidelines, practices, and regulations with the intent of
removing barriers that restrict affordable housing, especially
in future disaster relief situations.
We have talked a lot about the floodplain issue today. I
think the floodplain issue has been a very convenient excuse
for why these houses are sitting at Hope. Assertions that
manufactured homes cannot be used in a floodplain can be
refuted by FEMA's own guidelines. FEMA Publication 85 consists
of 247 pages about installing manufactured homes in
floodplains, for placement there. Our organization applauds the
efforts of Congressman Ross and Senator Pryor for the
introduction of the Hope Housing Act of 2006, and I understand
it has been reintroduced, with a new bill number, a few days
ago. Our organization respectfully encourages the immediate
adoption of this much-needed legislation to provide assistance
in hurricane areas.
The use of the travel trailer program has also impacted the
demand for manufactured homes. According, again, to Inspector
General Skinner's report from February, FEMA purchased 114,341
travel trailers. Some 27,000 of those units were purchased off
the lot from over 300 retail locations, in many cases without
regard to construction specifications. Only, again, a very
small percentage of the manufactured homes that were purchased
were purchased from retailers, and those were held to exacting
specifications by FEMA.
Travel trailers, yes, are more easily transported and
installed on temporary sites than manufactured homes, due to
their size and their self-contained nature in relation to
utilities. Such temporary placement of this emergency housing
is often overlooked by local zoning and building code officials
because they are seen as temporary. However, also due to their
size, travel trailers are less suited for long-term habitation
by families. And I am not aware of any installation guidelines
for travel trailers in the floodplain from FEMA, or any
construction standards, that would mirror the specifications
that are set for the manufactured home industry.
As far as our organization's recommendations here, we would
encourage FEMA to make better use of local resources, State
governments, and State emergency management agencies to
maintain open lines of communication with those entities and to
identify potential sites, both group and individual sites, for
the placement of temporary housing, access to transportation
providers, qualified installers and other necessary
technicians, and many resources that are here that could help
facilitate a faster response.
As far as the maintenance issue goes, our organization was
deeply troubled by press accounts from Mr. Skinner's previous
testimony before this Committee which characterized the homes
as sinking in mud, their frames bending, and being cannibalized
for parts.
We certainly applaud FEMA's public affairs staff for
opening the facility here to the interested media and quickly
dispelling the myth that these homes have deteriorated to the
point that they would be unusable even if they were able to be
sent to the Gulf Coast.
We understand that measures are being taken, as the Mayor
talked about, to maybe look at a long-term facility here at
Hope. And we certainly applaud that and fully support the idea
of Hope being used as a permanent or semi-permanent
distribution facility for FEMA aid.
As far as the future use of those houses, that is probably
our primary concern. We believe that if these homes are given
the opportunity, they will fulfill the mission for which they
were purchased, and that is temporary housing.
We understand that a number of homes have been sent to
Texas and Oklahoma for wildfire relief and that a number of
homes are currently being sent to Marmaduke and to Fitzgerald
Crossing in Cross County for relief from tornadoes that hit the
State earlier this month. And I am certainly encouraged by Mr.
Garratt's testimony earlier today about the use of housing in
other areas and other disasters, the 3,000/3,000/5,000 numbers
that he gave.
Our organization has asked our Congressional Delegation and
our Governor's office to seek an organized exit strategy for
these houses here at Hope, including the following components:
Expedited delivery of as many homes as possible to displaced
residents in the affected areas of the Gulf Coast; the
possibility for eligibility of temporary housing for displaced
residents who choose to locate outside of the States
immediately affected by last year's hurricanes; maintenance of
a manageable number of homes in FEMA inventory for future
disaster use; and finally, plans for disbursement and disposal
of excess inventory through the Federal Surplus Property
system, with the highest priority being given to other public
uses, including public health facilities, police and fire
departments, affordable housing applications, and other uses
for the public good.
As far as deactivation and disposal, that is probably our
highest concern, and biggest fear, in that growing public
pressure and political pressure could result in a wholesale
auction of homes here at pennies on the dollar to any willing
buyer. We feel that would cripple an already struggling market
for manufactured housing in Arkansas and the surrounding
States.
A number of concerns arise for us if FEMA decides to
dispose of these homes in that manner through a GSA auction.
And in no particular order, these things relate to: The
licensing of sellers; the auction of homes in Arkansas are
regulated under State authority; the homes have to be anchored
and installed in Arkansas under a cooperative agreement with
HUD; they are subject to warranty requirements; they are
subject to sales tax; and they are subject to lien and titling
issues.
These issues would certainly complicate the disposal of
these houses in an open-market auction in Arkansas. We fail, as
an industry and as an organization, to see how the Federal
Government, if it is unable to override local requirements in
Louisiana and other affected areas, will be able to dismiss
Arkansas laws and regulations related to the sale and auction
of these homes in Arkansas.
And in conclusion, we certainly appreciate your having the
hearing here, and your consideration of these issues is very
important to our industry. It is our sincere hope that the
majority of the homes purchased by FEMA and the ones here at
the Hope airport will be used to provide decent, safe, and
sanitary housing for victims of last year's storms and in
future disasters.
Again, we hope that all parties involved can learn from
successes and failures experienced on all levels in this
recovery effort. Our organization looks forward to being part
of the solution.
Madam Chairman, that concludes my prepared statement, and I
will be glad to try to answer any questions that you or Senator
Pryor may have to the best of my ability.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, and thank you for your
excellent testimony. I think your caution at the end about
disposing of some of these manufactured homes is a really
important one. Generally, the taxpayer recoups only pennies on
the dollar when surplus property is sold, so it is not a very
good deal from the taxpayers' perspective. You have also raised
a very important point about the fairness to the industry
because of the economic impact of flooding the market with
these manufactured homes and what the impact would be on the
manufacturers who participated in good faith, and I think that
is a good caution for all of us.
I just have one question that I want to follow up with you
on, and that is the unique specification that FEMA required for
the manufactured homes. You mentioned the September 8, 2005,
solicitation and that the specifications were different from
models provided for the retail marketplace. Given that
manufactured homes built for FEMA are designed only for
temporary use, would commercially available manufactured homes
be a suitable alternative to meeting housing needs in future
disasters? I am curious why FEMA came up with a unique set of
specifications when you have testified that there was an
inventory already available. What is the issue, from your
perspective?
Mr. Harper. And it would strictly be from my perspective.
Chairman Collins. I understand.
Mr. Harper. Our product is built to a Federal standard set
and maintained by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development, and within those standards there are thermal zones
that are geographically scheduled across the country and wind
standards, wind zones that are geographically scheduled, based
on your proximity to the Gulf or to the Atlantic Ocean.
In the requirements that FEMA set forth in the request on
September 8, 2005, there were some enhancements as far as wind
and thermal zones to make the houses--in my opinion this is
what they might have been thinking--more suitable for placement
within those areas, even though some of the areas where these
houses would be placed were not in what HUD had designed as
that specific thermal or wind zone, so there is a little bit of
confusion--they are not exactly on the same page there, in my
opinion.
As far as amenities, I mean the houses that were built have
no carpet throughout the unit, they are three bedrooms, one
bath. They are something that you would not find in our market,
something that we do not generally build, so of course, the
factories had to go back and retool and get ready to do what
they were able to do with these houses. But I do feel that
existing inventory throughout the country could have been
used--and again, in two instances we have been asked to survey
for existing inventory. Oddly enough, the first two faxes, I
believe, we got, or communications on that, had differing
specifications that we were trying to find in retail inventory
than what FEMA ended up ordering in the long run.
So I do not think the communication was really there to
locate the type of inventory needed. I do feel that something
should be done in looking at using the existing inventory
first, rather than purchasing new homes built to different
specifications, and hopefully save money.
Chairman Collins. Well, that is why we asked you about
that. In a previous incarnation, in a previous job, I spent 5
years in State government, and I was responsible for not only
the regulations, insurance, banking, and securities, but a host
of licensing boards, including the Manufactured Housing Board
of the State of Maine, so I am aware of the standards. It is
odd to me that FEMA came up with different specifications when
we already have a department of the Federal Government that
issues standards for manufactured housing. It seems yet another
example of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing,
and it is something that FEMA should take a look at.
Also, in general, when you require a manufacturer to
retool, it costs money. Even if the product that you are
producing is a lesser product, if you will, in terms of the
amenities that are included, the retooling of the manufacturing
process is expensive. Stopping a line and making the necessary
conversions is expensive. I think these are issues that we need
to communicate further with FEMA on, to see whether this is
like the infamous chocolate chip cookie many years ago, where
the government had specifications that greatly increased the
cost and finally switched to buying off-the-shelf chocolate
chip cookies and found that they served just fine and were a
much more efficient and cheaper way of doing business. So thank
you for your testimony on that.
Mayor, just one question for you. I have read a couple of
press stories that reported that FEMA was either unable or
unwilling to accept manufactured homes that were delivered to
Hope that were either damaged en route or did not meet
specifications. I would certainly understand why FEMA would not
want to take delivery of damaged homes or homes that did not
meet the specifications, but these reports have also indicated
that in some cases the manufactured homes were stored in rest
areas or beside highways until repairs or alterations could be
made, clearly not a good situation for the communities
involved. Has this been a problem for your community?
Mayor Ramsey. That is a little bit out of my purview, but
what I know about that, they would not accept them on the site
until they are ``mission ready.'' And of course, some of these
mobile homes came great distances, and coming down Interstates,
they lost shingles and they lost siding, so it was the
manufacturers that were basically leasing space from private
individuals or companies to pre-stage these mobile homes to get
them mission ready to accept them onto the site here at Hope.
It sort of sprung up as a cottage industry, so to speak, for
some of the landowners in about a 50-mile radius of Hope.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Pryor.
Senator Pryor. Thank you. Mayor, let me just say that I
want to thank you for your public service, and I know that you
have worked very hard, along with the City, to meet the needs
of the Federal Government and FEMA, and you have accommodated
them by modifying contracts and meeting them at odd hours and
doing all the things that you have done, so we really
appreciate that. And I know that the City of Hope and Hempstead
County and its communities are very proud to help in the effort
to bring relief to hurricane victims.
And I also noticed, thanks to Mike Ross pointing out, a few
faces in the crowd. Sheriff Jerry Crane has been here, County
Judge Wallace Martin, and Supreme Court Justice Jim Gunter. And
so we want to thank them for being here. And of course, Todd
Burrow of the Hope Star, who kind of helped break this story
statewide and nationally, I thank him for being here and
covering this hearing as well.
Let me ask, if I may, Mr. Harper, about the standby
contracts? Does that ring a bell for you? Can you tell the
Committee about standby contracts under the previous FEMA
administration?
Mr. Harper. Probably a question that could have been
addressed by Mr. Garratt as well, but it is our understanding
from our member manufacturers that under a previous
Administration, and previously under FEMA, standby contracts
would be solicited prior to the hurricane season coming about,
in that FEMA would say, ``These are the type of units we want
built,'' solicit the bids from the manufacturers, and hold
those bids until such time as the homes were needed.
Senator Pryor. Is it your understanding that in these
hurricanes last year there were brokers and third parties that
were being used to do this purchasing?
Mr. Harper. It is my understanding that FEMA purchased the
manufactured housing in two specific ways: Either directly from
manufacturers or from the third parties that contracted with
the manufacturers for the building of the homes.
Senator Pryor. And also, do you know, do you have any
knowledge of how long the industry was given to try to get
information back to FEMA or respond to requests for proposals?
Mr. Harper. The fax that I have that came from the FEMA
purchasing office gave out the specifications for these homes
on September 8, 2005, and required the bids to be back on
September 9, 2005.
Senator Pryor. Twenty-four hours?
Mr. Harper. Less than.
Senator Pryor. Let me ask, if I may, about the wind
protection. I know that one of the FEMA requirements is to make
these homes sturdier for wind protection. As I understand it,
that is just a matter of adding straps or somehow in the
manufacturing process just adding something fairly inexpensive
to the homes. Is that right or not?
Mr. Harper. To a degree, Senator. There is a full section
under the HUD standards that deals with wind storm protection.
It deals with not only the way that the walls and floors are
affixed to each other, but in certain zones it will also bring
out different types of exterior treatments, and also anchoring
and installation requirements.
Senator Pryor. Scott MacConomy, please put up Table 4,\1\
which one of the previous witnesses had, and I am sure you saw
it a few moments ago when they had this up. This is an
estimated cost for the life cycle of a travel trailer. Now, I
assume that travel trailer, is that a manufactured home or is
that actually the trailer? That is the trailers, OK. Are these
figures consistent with a mobile home in terms of how much it
is to haul them and install them, how much it is to maintain a
mobile home?
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\1\ Table 4 appears in the Appendix on page 74.
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Mr. Harper. This is the first time that I saw these
figures, Senator, and I think they came from the Inspector
General's office, so I think that question would probably be
better posed to him.
Senator Pryor. And let me ask if you know this. When a
typical consumer buys a mobile home, how much does it cost him
to have it installed--and I am not talking about the travel
because I understand that is going to be a per-mile charge, but
to get the site prepped, how much does that actually cost? On
average. And I know it is different, but on average.
Mr. Harper. It is different, based on different sites and
based on different conditions and different types of financing
that are going to be used. If the home is going to be
permanently installed, with a permanent foundation, footings,
and those sorts of things, but the average, industry average is
going to run somewhere between $4,000 to $6,000.
Senator Pryor. Per unit?
Mr. Harper. Per unit.
Senator Pryor. All right. My last question is just a
general mop-up type question in that, you have sat through this
entire hearing, heard a lot of things asked and heard a lot of
things being said. Before we close here, is there anything you
would like to address or you would like to follow up on or
clarify from other witnesses' testimony or maybe a question
that we missed?
Mr. Harper. I tried to incorporate some of the things that
I heard in the other witnesses' testimony in my review or
summary of my comments, and I think everything was pretty well
covered, Senator. Again, I did touch on Mr. Garratt's comments
about site development, and I think that is something that
certainly needs to be addressed in a disaster-preparedness
mode. For instance, after the mass exodus of people from the
hurricane areas came to Arkansas, we coordinated with the
Governor's office here under their Katrina Assistance Relief
Effort, or KARE program. And we surveyed our members in the
State to find available individual sites in manufactured home
communities and parks and available inventory for purchase
here. We felt that was a good step in our direction for helping
on the local level. We feel that needs to be expanded to other
States and other regions. In my conversations with my
counterparts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, they feel
the same, that there needs to be more coordination before the
disaster in order to make a better response afterward.
Senator Pryor. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. I want to thank this panel of
witnesses for their help today, and I want to thank all of our
witnesses for giving us a better understanding of the situation
with temporary housing. Our intent is not only to find out what
went wrong with the response to and recovery from Hurricane
Katrina, but also to ensure that we can put in place the
necessary reforms as we go forward with the 2006 hurricane
season, or respond to other disasters, whether they are natural
or man made.
This represents the 22nd hearing that the Committee has
held. It has been a very valuable hearing. Our Committee has
heard from 85 witnesses. We have formally interviewed 320 other
individuals, and we have reviewed some 820,000 pages of
documents. This has been a very comprehensive investigation,
and I think it is appropriate that our last hearing is not in
Washington, DC, but rather out where we can talk to people who
have taken in the victims of the storm and who are seeking to
assist them.
I very much appreciate all of the cooperation, and I am
grateful to Senator Pryor for suggesting this hearing, and I
really want to thank our hosts here at the University of
Arkansas Community College at Hope for being so gracious and
helping us meet all of our many needs today. Thank you again,
very much.
This has been my first visit to Arkansas, but I certainly
hope that it will not be my last. How appropriate that my first
visit is to a city called Hope. Thank you very much for your
hospitality. The hearing record will be held open for 5 days
for the submission of additional questions or statements or any
other materials. Senator Pryor, do you have any concluding
comments?
Senator Pryor. I do not, other than just to thank you again
for being here and doing this hearing here. It means a lot to
the folks in Hope, and hopefully it will help us be more
prepared. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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