County May Take Over FEMA Trailer Park

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – County officials are considering taking over a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer park whose remaining residents face eviction more than two years after they were left homeless by Hurricane Charley.

About 135 residents of the trailer park have been unable to find other housing, and FEMA plans to terminate leases on Sept. 26 and begin legal action to close the park.

The county’s hurricane recovery director, Bob Hebert, pitched the idea of a takeover to county commissioners at a meeting Tuesday.

“Realistically, I think we’re going to have to do something,” Hebert said. “These are county residents.”

Commissioners seemed receptive and asked Hebert to come back with a firm proposal.

If Charlotte County took over the park, it likely would operate much like a public housing project for those most in need.

FEMA spokeswoman Mildred Acevedo said Wednesday the agency is willing to donate the trailers and have Charlotte County take over the park. She said she hoped that would also be the case in several other counties where storm victims are still housed in FEMA units.

Initially promising to provide temporary emergency housing for 18 months, FEMA extended the move-out deadline at the 90-acre trailer park an extra six months. Most of the remaining residents are poor and many are elderly or disabled.

About 201 FEMA units were still occupied when the 18-month deadline arrived in April. Affordable housing, which was scarce before Hurricane Charley swept through the region in August 2004, has been even harder to find because Charley destroyed the county’s only subsidized public housing.