City of RVs Is Ready For Families

City of RVs Is Ready For Families: "BAKER, La. -- By Monday, families displaced by Hurricane Katrina will move here into a 'mini city' of neatly spaced rows of about 600 white RV trailers that was, until eight days ago, a 65-acre cow pasture outside of Baton Rouge. A team of 200 engineers, plumbers, laborers, draftsmen and city officials have worked around the clock to install water and sewer pipes to the grassy fields, converting the area into what some evacuees working on the project call the 'City of Hope.'

The Federal Emergency Management Agency once envisioned 'cities' of 500 to 600 RVs scattered across the South to house evacuees uprooted from their homes by Katrina. But those plans have bogged down as FEMA has tried to make its way through a maze of bureaucratic hurdles to lease land, comply with local zoning laws and overcome local opposition to 'FEMA cities' within their borders.

"Our infrastructure cannot handle it," said Riley "Pee Wee" Berthelot Jr., president of West Baton Rouge parish, of FEMA's plans to install 700 mobile homes in his parish of 22,000 residents. The parish has already accepted more than 400 children in its schools, and Berthelot adds that many of the parish's rural residents are uncomfortable with the former city residents now moving in."