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GSA is the only Sales Center approved for nationwide activity for all commodity groups and for all methods of sale. Surplus and exchange/sale property as well as forfeited, property are offered for competitive sales to the general public, most commonly through GSA Auctions®, our internet auction site. All GSA sales, whether on the Internet, live auctions, or other methods, are listed on GovSales.gov, the eFAS central portal for all government sales. By regulation, federal agencies must use an approved Sales Center for their public sales.
Word got out that he was testing trailers, and people from Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, and Illinois began to seek him out. Every test he did came in above the 16 ppm threshold that had been established as the new FEMA standard after the congressional hearings. None of the people who contacted Shapiro had been told, before they bought the trailers, that they were dangerous to live in. Most of them told Shapiro they couldn’t afford to move; they just appreciated knowing the risk.
Katrina Cottage House Plans, Floor Plans & Designs
It is very easy to focus on the disaster that has already hit. A disaster that was not answered by anyone correctly. However, if we re-focus our energy, sell off the not for flood area trailers and replace them with Gulf Coast suitable trailers, haven't we just accomplished what so many complain of? We have rendered ourselves unprepared to handle the next major disaster unless, of course, it hits New Orleans or the Gulf area.
I have no idea why they were still empty, but the word on the street was that it had something to do with their sewer hookups not being suitable. After Katrina, 1 million people lost their homes in Louisiana and Mississippi. FEMA sent thousands of mobile homes into the region only to learn later of high levels of formaldehyde, a chemical used in the glue for building materials that can lead to breathing problems and is also believed to cause cancer. They’re clean, shutterless and decorated with a rainbow of beige hues. They’re mobile homes built for future disaster victims and, so far, have safe levels of formaldehyde.
Katrina trailers for sale — for $5 or less
But in the oil fields of Alexander, where Shapiro found them, people had, at best, only a dim memory of hearing something bad about the trailers on the late night news. That's why we still have zoning bylaws with minimum square footages and that ban trailers. Keep that trash out and keep those property values high. Perhaps this will change as aging boomers want to downsize and millennials can't afford to find a place to live. The families are either living at group sites or in trailers in the driveways of their homes as they rebuild.
I would love to see how they explain this one to the suffering people of the Gulf Coast. One thing they will watch is whether formaldehyde levels increase over time. Schuback said cooking and smoking can sometimes increase the level of formaldehyde in the air. Shapiro gave the couple a prototype “air remediation device” – a houseplant hooked up to an aquarium pump with the diaphragm reversed.
Harmony Mobile Home for Sale
Here, trailers are defined as manufactured homes built before the 1976 establishment of federal construction and safety standards for mobile homes by the U.S. There is no industry standard for the amount of formaldehyde allowed in travel trailers. The government sets standards for indoor air quality for materials used to build mobile homes, but not for travel trailers. Katrina Cottages are built with hurricane-resistant materials and are designed to withstand hurricane force winds. A Katrina Cottage must meet the International Building Code as adopted by Mississippi and Louisiana, and should be installed to FEMA flood elevation guidelines, if applicable. It may be built of any technology or delivery system, including mobile home standards, pre-manufactured elements, panelization, or site-built of any material.
While designed at the Mississippi Renewal Forum immediately after Katrina for emergency housing, they may be useful as reasonably priced housing anywhere. The Cottages are useful for camps, beach houses, hunting lodges, guest cottages, and reasonably priced, well-designed primary housing in any part of the world. The certification statement for purchasers of travel trailers is a binding document and is made in accordance with and subject to the penalties of Title 18, Section 1001, the United States Code, Crime and Criminal Procedures. Prospective bidders were provided a link in each sales listing, where they are required to read and certify acceptance prior to being able to submit a bid. On March 2, 2010, GSA sent an electronic mail message to buyers of travel trailers reminding them of the requirements of the certification.
The stickers that read “NOT TO BE USED FOR HOUSING” were gone from the trailers almost as soon as they left the auction lot, though none of the buyers would admit to removing them. But on Jan. 1, 2010, a court injunction banning the sale of the trailers expired, and FEMA handed them off to the General Services Administration to auction them off, for about 7 percent what FEMA had originally paid for them. The GSA made buyers sign an agreement promising not to sell them as housing, and it slapped stickers on them saying that they were not to be used for human habitation — just storage or recreation. Still, a month after Katrina and Rita hit landfall, Louisiana had only managed to get 109 families into trailers. The alternatives were overcrowded shelters, or squatting in the wreckage of the flood. As soon as Nick Shapiro turned into the parking lot of the Tumbleweed Inn in Alexander, N.D., he recognized the trailers.
The mobile homes — including one travel trailer — were built as part of a program to develop new disaster housing solutions for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. After the destructive hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast in August and September 2005, FEMA Spent more than $2.5 billion to buy up nearly 150,000 trailers, campers, and mobile homes, many of which were never even used. In 2007, the government started to sell these travel trailers, and many were bought for unheard-of prices, as potential buyers began inquiring how to buy a FEMA Trailer, many were gobbling up the FEMA trailer deals rather that spending $25,000 to $40,000 for a brand-new trailer. Even after the National Institutes of Health declared formaldehyde to be a carcinogen, the Department of Housing and Urban Development didn’t bother to regulate levels of formaldehyde for travel trailers or motor homes, under the theory that they were only temporary lodging.
So Gillette got a grant from the Sierra Club to buy even more kits. As a form of architecture, mobile homes are not inherently less functional or safe than stick-built homes—a fact made evident by the limited but persistent innovations in corners of the industry described above. However, socially entrenched ideas of mobile homes as fundamentally unsafe spaces have caused people to regard them as faulty or insecure, especially in the face of natural disasters. How mobile homes can be inadequate when you compare them to FEMA trailers is beyond me.
But instead the trailers were occupied by young men seeking their fortunes in the service economy that had sprung up around the oil and gas workers. Shapiro began to file public records requests to find out as much as he could about the trailers, and where they went. Now, when people contacted him, he had a collection of spreadsheets that he could search through to verify whether their trailer was one of the 120,000. Those who did try to get rid of the trailers, though, found that it wasn’t easy. Marty Horine of Clinton, Mo., bought a 32-foot ex-FEMA Gulfstream Cavalier for her son in 2007, two weeks before the trailers were officially declared unfit to live in.
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