Wanda Tiger gestures as she talks outside her FEMA trailer home in Little Axe, Okla. Nearly six years after the hurricane, the mobile homes that became a symbol of the government’s failed response are finally being put to good use. FEMA has quietly given many of them away to American Indian tribes that are in desperate need of affordable housing. (AP Photo)By NOMAAN MERCHANT and MURRAY EVANS, Associated Press
LITTLE AXE, Okla. – Wanda Tiger and her husband needed a new home after a long-term house-sitting arrangement came to an end. But for members of their American Indian tribe in rural Oklahoma, affordable housing options were few.
Then tribal leaders learned of an impossibly attractive offer: Mobile homes that had never been occupied were available from the government almost for free. They had stood vacant for years after being rejected as temporary housing following Hurricane Katrina.
To Tiger and members of other tribes, the homes seemed perfect, even luxurious.
“When you ain’t got nothing, you’re happy with whatever you can get,” said Tiger, a member of the Absentee Shawnee tribe who now lives in a three-bedroom home courtesy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “They call them temporary homes, but hey, sometimes it’s your permanent home, and we’re satisfied with it.”