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Flood victims approaching deadline to move out of FEMA trailers

6 years 4 months 4 weeks ago Thursday, October 19 2017 Oct 19, 2017 October 19, 2017 7:16 PM October 19, 2017 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - Carl Deamer, his 1-year old daughter and three other family members live in a three-bedroom FEMA housing unit in Baton Rouge.

"I don't want to be in this cramped up trailer forever, I'd like to get back in my house," Deamer said. "I work at night, when I come in, I basically wake everyone up because the rooms are so close," Deamer said.

Deamer and his daughter were living in his mother's house before it flooded. Now, he says FEMA is pushing them to be out of the trailer by the Feb. 14 deadline.

"They sent us several notices saying, hey you have to be out by January."

FEMA Spokesperson, Sharon Karr says FEMA is not pressuring people to get out of the trailers.

"We do go out and make sure they are making progress to their permanent housing," Karr said.

But they have been making visits and sending letter's of interest to those who might want to buy the trailers and reminding them of the deadline.

"We don't want people stuck or blindsided that have a deadline they've forgotten about," Karr said

But Deamer says it's highly unlikely that his mother's home will be ready to move back into by the FEMA deadline, because it must be elevated before any repairs can be made.

"They haven't even started on our house. It's basically a shell right now."

If survivors are still in the trailers after the deadline, they will have to pay rent, plus a penalty of $550 a month.

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