Group fights park closures as Sunday deadline nears

• By JOE GYAN JR.
• Advocate New Orleans bureau
• Published: May 30, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — No one wants to live in a FEMA trailer park, but several hundred Louisiana families still residing at Renaissance Village near Baker and five other parks nearly three years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita should not be booted from their temporary homes this weekend, park residents and housing advocates said Thursday.

The residents and advocates, including those from Renaissance Village, called for permanent, safe and affordable housing as well as case management services for hurricane-displaced families.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is trying to close its last six trailer parks in Louisiana, including Renaissance Village, by Sunday — the official start of the 2008 hurricane season.

More than 400 families still are occupying trailers at those group sites, and FEMA estimates that about 380 families will be in place at the sites by Sunday.

“I am concerned that the number of homeless in this region will grow,’’ Bishop Charles Jenkins of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana said Thursday during a news conference in New Orleans that was attended by trailer residents and housing advocates from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

FEMA officials insist they will not evict anyone, but the agency’s goal remains to try to get everyone out of the parks as quickly as possible.

“We’re not going to leave anyone homeless,’’ Andrew Thomas, a FEMA spokesman in New Orleans, said.

Lydia Ball-Arthur, a former Renaissance Village tenant who now serves on the Renaissance Village Leadership Team as an advocate for those tenants who remain at the park, said the homeless population will increase if FEMA follows through with its weekend deadline.

“This is a tragedy for the working poor,’’ she said.

Thomas said there were 36 active trailer leases at Renaissance Village as of Thursday, down from the 93 leases at the park last week and the 573 at the park’s peak. The park opened in October of 2005.

In addition to the start of another hurricane season, much of the urgency for moving families out of trailers stems from worries about potentially hazardous levels of formaldehyde in the trailers.

Tom Garrett, a Renaissance Village tenant who was renting an apartment in New Orleans’ French Quarter when Katrina hit, is moving next week to a rental property in Florida — a property he had been searching for since August.

“This is a mess,’’ he said of his predicament and the situation at Renaissance Village.