A place called Hope

Here in Arkansas, we're shaking our heads over the 10,000 FEMA trailers that are going unused in Hope instead of housing displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Just this week, FEMA announced it would no longer pay for the hotel rooms where many of those homeless people have been living. And not only are the Hope trailers sitting empty -- they may never be alloted to the Katrina victims, according to the New York Times:

Only about 2,700 of the 25,000 mobile homes ordered at a cost of $850 million have been installed, and at least 10,000 are sitting in Hope, Ark., according to documents and statements from Federal Emergency Management Agency officials. Though about 55,000 Louisiana families are still waiting for a manufactured housing unit, the mobile homes may never be used because FEMA regulations prohibit them from being installed in flood-prone coastal areas, federal officials said.

The effects of this incompetence are not abstract. Katrina victims and the affected region continue to suffer enormously as a result.