There has to be a better way. The government's short-term housing post-disaster solution -- spending billions to truck in thousands of mobile homes and travel trailers -- seems wasteful and outdated.
U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R- West Palm Beach, talked of seeking a more cost-effective temporary housing solution in a recent visit to the newspaper's Port Charlotte office.
He's proposing a more permanent solution -- building smaller dwellings either on home sites or congregated in an area that could be used for affordable housing after the disaster response is completed.
An example of what's being considered for New Orleans is on display at an Englewood factory. Workers at the Home Front Homes' plant built the shell of a Katrina III cottage in three days. Architect Andres Duany's old-Florida details took a couple of extra days to pull off, but they makes this little house sing.
Big windows, an inviting porch with low rails and a metal roof make the house architecturally sound. It's only 780 square feet (including a loft) and the interior is unfinished. Painted yellow with green trim, the cottages blend better into existing communities.
The cottages can be built at the back of a homeowners' property to serve as temporary housing. The main house could be rebuilt as an add-on to the smaller dwelling. Or, the cottage could be left unattached and used later as an in-law or guest apartment.
Brian Bishop, Home Front's president, is a mason by trade. Now, he's preaching a new way of building that's more environmentally friendly, energy-efficient and hurricane-resistant. No wood is used in his cottage. Energy bills are half of what you pay of you live in a concrete-block house in Florida, he said.
"Home Front spent millions working out what you see here," Bishop said during an impromptu tour of the cottage and the factory. "It's the most rapidly built, greenest, wind-resistant building that meets the architectural standards of the region."
Home Front's factory builds a panelized construction system that can be assembled by a few people on site. Bishop's workers use 4-inch-thick polystyrene panels sandwiched on both sides by 8-millimeter cement-board (imagine a giant, double-stuffed ice-cream sandwich). The secret to their sturdiness is a lamination system that seals and squeezes the air out of the foam. Recycled plastic decking material anchors the panels on both ends; the panels slide into slots held together by galvanized metal splines. The panels are further secured by stainless-steel, self-tapping screws.
Bishop says the steel-ridge beam home assembly system has been wind-tunnel-tested to withstand 200-mph winds. On August 2004, three of Bishop's houses on Douglas Road passed a for-real field test during Hurricane Charley's 145- mph onslaught in Port Charlotte. One souvenir of the storm -- a slash pine branch embedded in the wall of one of the repaired houses -- is on display at the factory.
Bishop's outspoken in his dislike of the Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers, pointing out that the last post-Andrew (1992) structure was only recently pulled out of South Florida. "FEMA trailers -- the gift that keeps on giving," he said.
FEMA foibles
When Foley talks FEMA, everyone should listen. His eight-county district, which includes part of Charlotte County been hit by multiple storms in the past two years and his constituents have had ample firsthand experience with the agency. Last spring and summer, he was one of FEMA's harshest critics when the agency made questionable reimbursements after a series of storms hit Florida in 2004.
He and other lawmakers said the agency should be a separate, Cabinet-level department with its director reporting to the president. The disaster-response mandate seemed to get short shrift under the giant umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security.
"I'm afraid they are trapped in their own bureaucracy," Foley said of FEMA officials when he visited our office last year, a few days before Hurricane Katrina hit.
That turned out to be a prescient observation.
I've often wondered if FEMA's post-Katrina meltdown could have been avoided. Would the disastrous outcome have been different in Mississippi and Louisiana if Congress had acted earlier on Foley's, and others', oft-repeated concerns that the agency was in dire need of reform?
This year, Foley said he has more confidence in FEMA under the leadership of David Paulison, a former Miami-Dade fire chief. That's reassuring to hear, for a change.
Vicki Dean is an editorial writer in the Herald-Tribune's Charlotte County bureau. She can be reached at 627-7521 or by e-mail at .
Interested?
To learn more, visit the Web site . Home Front Homes is at 512 Paul Morris Drive in the Morris Industrial Park, east of Pine Street in Englewood. From Interstate 75, take exit 191 and go south on River Road 12 miles, past U.S. 41.
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