KATRINA Eviction notices cause stir

FEMA is weeding out those who are not qualified.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
D'IBERVILLE, Miss. -- The mail carrier brought the registered letter to Jessica Lessard's tiny trailer, along with a sour and foreboding comment:
"I hope you got better news than I got," she said.
Lessard, 24, tore open the envelope and felt like crying. The letter was from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It said that she and her family had 30 days to leave the flimsy, government-issued box that has been their home since Hurricane Katrina.
Three weeks later, Lessard, her fiance, George Courtney, and their 3-year-old son are still worried, though they have appealed their case. The house they once shared with Courtney's stepfather was ruined by the storm, and they are too poor to afford the Gulf Coast's post-Katrina rents. Nearby relatives are also in trailers, or in homes with no room for them.
Deemed ineligible
Lessard's family is one of about 3,000 in Mississippi that have been deemed ineligible for a trailer as FEMA weeds out those Katrina victims who do not meet the qualifications for its emergency housing program. About 450 households have already received eviction letters from FEMA; the rest will receive letters in the next few weeks. Some live among the region's new clusters of trailers in open fields and parking lots. Others live in trailers parked next to their water-spoiled homes.
The reasons for the evictions are varied, and many of them are legitimate. There are trailer dwellers who could not prove they are legal U.S. residents; people who had owned a second, undamaged home all along; and people whose homes were damaged, but not by Katrina.
The trailers, which are generally 240 square feet, are returned to a FEMA staging area in Purvis, Miss., where they are cleaned and repaired, then stored until they are needed again.
Gray areas
But a number of residents say they are being kicked out erroneously, or for technicalities that arise from gray areas in FEMA regulations. Lessard's problem is one of the most common: FEMA officials told her she was ineligible because someone from her previous residence had also requested a trailer.
Lessard said her fiance's stepfather had indeed received a FEMA mobile home -- it is crammed with six people. But that doesn't necessarily mean she can't have one. FEMA guidelines say the agency "may consider" more than one housing application from extended families that were living on one property before the storm.
If Lessard and Courtney lose their appeal, they figure they'll go to a hotel for a few days. They can imagine the money running out there, but they cannot imagine what comes next.
"We really ain't got no place to go," said Courtney, 28, who is making about $8 an hour working at an auto parts store. "I just started a new job. We ain't got no money saved up."