The Galveston County Daily News

Frank Kaplan hopes to be out of his government-issued mobile home and back into his own house in Galveston in time for Christmas.

As he nears that goal, he’s had plenty of offers to buy the mobile home, including one from guys who want to put it on a deer lease.

Marty Rogers and his wife, Barbara Davis, who are living in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s mobile home park in High Island, would like to buy their mobile home and put it on the lot where their house stood in Gilchrist before Ike washed it away. At a community meeting in San Leon last week, about six people who live in FEMA trailers said they want to buy their mobile homes.

FEMA officials said dozens of people who have been living in the temporary homes have pressed the agency to let them buy the trailers so they can remain on their property.

Charles Cook, FEMA’s individual assistance group supervisor, said the agency would sell the mobile homes to families — but only if they plan on using them as their residence and only if local officials will issue the utility hookup permits needed to make the mobile homes a longer-term housing option.

Local officials are balking at issuing such permits.

Sometimes, local authorities deny the requests because the mobile homes are in flood zones, as is the case on the Bolivar Peninsula.

In Galveston, no requests have been granted or likely will be because the city prohibits mobile homes on private lots. FEMA trailers were granted temporary exceptions by the city as well as the county.

“The county allowed FEMA to place trailers in flood plains as a temporary measure only — to expire in March or April 2010,” Galveston County Engineer Mike Fitzgerald said. His office oversees the permits for the unincorporated areas of the county.

“What the county wants to see happen is for FEMA and the homeowner to make better progress in getting their permanent homes restored, instead of continuing with the trailers,” Fitzgerald said. “Each FEMA trailer was permitted as a temporary unit to FEMA — not the homeowner — and in order for it to become permanent, it must be elevated to the 100-year-flood level.”

Fitzgerald said anyone wanting to put a FEMA mobile home on private property would have to elevate the home to as high as 18 feet on the peninsula.

“The long-term goal is we don’t want FEMA trailers as permanent housing in Galveston County, period,” County Judge Jim Yarbrough said. “Will we have accomplished that? No. There will be some FEMA trailers left in Galveston County when all the dust settles.”

Yarbrough said he expects that in the unincorporated areas of the county that are outside the 100-year flood plain, the mobile homes will be scattered, even though the county doesn’t want them there. Unlike cities, the county has no authority — other than state building laws and flood zone regulations — to restrict where mobile homes are placed.

As for those wanting to turn an old FEMA mobile home into a deer camp, Cook said while the agency has restrictions on whom it can sell a mobile home to, a person who could buy a trailer was free to resell it.