It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

As my regular reader knows, I've been entertained for the last couple of years by FEMA Trailers, a federal project so inept that it seems to have been a kind of performance art piece demonstrating that government shouldn't be allowed to do anything, ever.

The trailers started out as a modest and obvious suggestion: "Hey, why don't we get a bunch of trailers and haul 'em down there for people to live in while their houses are being rebuilt." In the flurry of political butt-covering following Katrina, Congress and the President were throwing money at any project that demonstrated "I care" and "we're doing something, already, so leave us alone, wouldja?" the round-up-some-trailers plan metastasized into a full-blown government boondoggle.

Instead of quickly grabbing trailers parked in sales lots around the country, FEMA protected taxpayer interests by contracting the manufacture of thousands of trailers to Spartan government specs. As a result, the trailers trickled off assembly lines over the course of months, leaving Katrina victims either homeless or running-up big hotel bills. The trailers arrived too late to do anything but rust in parking lots and farm fields. Attempts to auction the surplus failed because no one wanted a government trailer with no amenities, and in the end it turned out that the trailers themselves were poisonous for those who lived in them.

The few trailers that actually were used generally served as temporary housing for people while they rebuilt their homes. Which is where this sad saga ends, in the front yards of ruined houses across New Orleans. There, the trailers have become an eyesore, and it's time for them to be hauled off to the dustbin of history:

Last month, Mayor Ray Nagin set a July 1 deadline to vacate the trailers or city officials would begin enforcing an ordinance that fines residents for parking trailers on their property. The ordinance was waived after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

City inspectors will hand out warnings to those still in trailers or help residents file for extensions, said Edward Horan, the city's zoning administrator. Residents still in violation after 15 days will trigger a hearing process and could be fined up to $500, he said. Daily fines could follow.

So it all ends the way it began, in oblivious bureaucracy. What started as an emergency response ("Let's get some trailers!") and evolved into a long-term program that satisfied government process requirements but failed to solve the problem at hand, becomes a clean-up project where the people who are handing out the warnings that the trailers must go are cross-trained in helping people file for extensions.

In a few years, the State of Louisiana will start designating the trailers as historical sites, hearkening back to historic Hurricane Katrina, and will forbid them being torn down or hauled off.

Those trailers are going to be with us forever.