NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel sent a letter on July 23 to FEMA Acting Administrator Mark Gaynor on behalf of the Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) expressing significant concerns about the agency’s failure to address the disaster housing recovery needs of low-income mobile home residents.
The letter notes that FEMA consistently requires applicants to its Independent Assistance (IA) program to prove eligibility for the program in the form of title documents. Many residents of manufactured housing lease their homes, those who own their homes frequently do not have title documents, and others typically do not have control over the land on which they live. For all these reasons, mobile home residents have far less access to IA. DHRC partner California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc., has been working with residents of a mobile home park in Santa Rosa, CA, where FEMA has repeatedly denied assistance applications after the park owners decided not to rebuild.
The letter concludes with a call for FEMA to move quickly to ensure that no residents of mobile home parks damaged or destroyed by recent disasters face homelessness and to end the denial of assistance for artificial reasons.
Read the full letter to FEMA at: https://bit.ly/2LNm8hF