WASHINGTON -- An analysis of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Disaster Housing Strategy has revealed significant shortcomings in the FEMA plan, submitted today after more than a year delay. In particular, the analysis found that rather than submitting plans for six of nine required improvements to the agency's disaster housing strategy, FEMA instead proposes creating a new entity to which it defers the bulk of these responsibilities.

The analysis also found that FEMA has yet to specifically identify a reliable alternative for housing a substantial number of evacuees from large-scale catastrophes such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the federal levee failures that followed. Travel trailers and mobile homes remain FEMA's primary option to house disaster victims when thousands or hundreds of thousands of units need to be made available in a short period of time.

"No Americans should ever face the delays, red tape and other dangers that met the people of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast in their time of greatest need," said U.S. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La. "The FEMA strategy delivered today sadly demonstrates that the agency has not learned enough from this history, and may be doomed to repeat it."

Sen. Landrieu chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery, whose majority investigative staff conducted the analysis.

"This report from FEMA hardly merits a letter grade," Sen. Landrieu said. "At best it deserves an 'incomplete' for lacking two most essential ingredients: creativity and commonsense.

"My subcommittee will not let up in its efforts to set this strategy on a better path. In the next few days I will be meeting with top-level FEMA officials and will hold a hearing next week to begin to determine how to fill in the glaring gaps in FEMA's plan."

The Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act (PKEMRA), which was signed into law in 2006, required FEMA to provide to Congress a National Disaster Housing Strategy by July, 1, 2007. After missing the initial deadline, FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison said in December 2007 that the Strategy was under final review by FEMA and would be completed in the winter. At a subsequent March 4, 2008, hearing of Sen. Landrieu's subcommittee, Acting Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson again pushed back the deadline, saying he believed the report could be delivered by the 1st of April. When that deadline passed, Sen. Landrieu pushed Administrator Paulison for the report at an April 3 hearing, and he promised its completion on June 1.

FEMA missed each self-imposed deadline, and subsequently failed to produce drafts of the strategy or its components. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), was more forthcoming with the subcommittee's investigation into national disaster housing programs, and provided a draft of FEMA's housing strategy several weeks ago.

"Under law passed by Congress and signed by the President, this strategy was due to Congress more than one year ago," Sen. Landrieu said. "Yet, despite the extra time in which to complete its work, FEMA has proposed few new ideas.

"On six important problems Congress identified after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, FEMA offers no solutions and instead recommends the creation of a new entity to do the job FEMA was directed to do. The agency also stands by trailers as a potential part of the response to catastrophic disasters, and no alternative approaches are developed enough to demonstrate an ability to meet the substantial need such a catastrophe presents."

A full copy of the subcommittee's analysis is available here: