Thoreau’s Law in Action

Wes Pruden has a tragicomic piece you should check out. It appears the mayor of Ocean Springs, a town devastated by Katrina, approached FEMA to fund locally popular permanent housing for $60,000 (which incidentally is what it costs the agency to “ship and set up” a trailer).

FEMA said no. The law allows FEMA to provide housing only "on a temporary basis," and the Gulf Coast residents who qualify for one of the 10,000 trailers currently parked and going to rust and ruin on an abandoned muddy airstrip in Arkansas can have one for 18 months. So Ocean Springs will soon have a trailer park, with 600 trailers to replace the 700 houses destroyed by the storm. "FEMA," the mayor says, "is creating trailer trash."

Your community can’t have permanent housing it likes, but it can have rusting blight -- for 18 months. Rules are rules.

Read the whole thing.