There is a huge difference between a "motor home" and a house trailer. Mr. McIntyre indicated "trailers". Please update your research terminology. Mother J is the last place I would expect to read hyped up spin or is it just a case of reporter ignorance?
R.B. Wolfe

New Orleans officials say they are motor homes (or "motorhomes" if you will). Naturally, that means they have to be raised considerably. But even if New Orleans officials have made a mistake in calling them that and they are actually trailers, their point is that raising them sigificantly is the only they can be installed in flood plain areas, and that would make them "permanent" housing.

As the daughter of a man who built trailer and motor homes for a living, I appreciate the use of proper nomenclature. But the bottom line is that federal regulations require shoring up as a precaution against flooding, and that is the problem here. New Orleans officials are frustrated that once again, there was not enough inter-agency communication to deal with the problem efficiently.

Mobile homes, trailers, whatever...the point is that they want those ni, uh , folks out of NOLA. The whole plan was to depopulate the area one way or the other.

Mission accomplished, I guess.

They are mobile homes. I saw them personally on the highway during the Christmas holidays as I was traveling back to Texas. Another important note to mention, these trailers are fully furnished, including PLASMA TV'S! Talk about government waste. A plasma tv, or any tv for that matter, is the last thing I am going to be worried about if I don't have a home.

I work for a manufactured housing company who sold FEMA quite a few MANUFACTURED HOMES, some of which came from existing iventory. A small percentage of these did indeed have TV's and other luxury items but for the most part these homes are modest. Those built to FEMA specs are very modest in fact. RV is the proper term for the smaller towable units...stands for Recreational Vehicle. A Motor home is a motorized RV. A trailer is something you pull behind your car, and Mobile Home is a pre-1976 term used to define pre-HUD era factory-built housing. Today's Manufactured homes are a far cry from an RV or a Mobile Home, and are certainly NOT motor homes. All that being said, it angers me that we busted our humps for several months to get those units staged only to watch them sit and sit and sit and not be utilized. Unbelievably poor effort on the part of all officials involved both local, state, and federal!

I think that President Bush should let the people have the homes instead of wasting our tax dollars!! If their really is 11,000 trailer homes and they cost about $30,000 apeice thats close to half a million dollars that he has wasted!! FEMA, if your looking here,
GET WITH IT!!!

A minority of Americans elected a useless party to govern our country.How many depressions do we need to find that out. We can easy see. The Republican greed are writen all over our red balance sheet. And the middle class disappearing, As the fundamentalist`s preachers are telling us God our savior will apear very soon. But do`t bet on it, talk is cheep and all the fundamentalist`s preachers and belivers may have too wait a loong time before the get to divide the young maidens between them self as we odinary humans burn in Hell.Some people may find this comments ofencive

Very cool design! Useful information. Go on!