Housing the Displaced: Manufactured homes and RVs

Reported by Market Watch: FEMA looking for housing, RVs after Katrina

On Wednesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency broadcast a call for the RV and manufactured housing makers to help the federal government deal with housing needs in New Orleans, where 80% of the city was flooded.

The trade group Manufactured Housing Institute, working with FEMA, asked retailers and manufacturers to "fax all available inventory" that's ready to ship to the agency and the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.

Louisiana ranks seventh in the U.S. so far in 2005, representing 3.6% of mobile home industry shipments, with Alabama seventh and Mississippi 14th, according to BB&T analyst John Diffendal.

Diffendal estimated that FEMA used about 13,000 travel trailers in Florida and about 500 in Alabama after the 2004 hurricane season, "so this event could require some multiple of last year's needs."

We're looking a perhaps a million displaced people...I think the multiple will be a big one. But where will they put them?