FEMA Boots Katrina Victims From Trailers

NEW ORLEANS, June 1, 2008— -- Matthew Bailey spent the weekend moving from the cramped trailer that's been his home for nearly three years since Hurricane Katrina.

Nearly 400 other families remain at Renaissance Village, outside of Baton Rouge, and five other camps like it. They are all that remain of the 111 camps created after Hurricane Katrina.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency notified all of them that their deadline to move out was today, not coincidentally the first day of the 2008 hurricane season.

"I'm glad it's kind of coming to an end," Bailey said as he prepared to leave Renaissance Village, once the largest of the camps, with a borrowed car and the hope he will be able to afford his new home. "Hopefully, if there's a next time, people will live a little better than this."

There's good reason for the move. The trailers can't withstand hurricane winds, and the formaldehyde used to make them -- at five times the safe level -- is making people sick, especially children. But many of the trailer residents have nowhere else to go.

"Right now we're like between a rock and a hard place," said Joseph Griffin, who planned to stay. "The hardest part is when I leave here today, wondering if my trailer's going to be there when I get back."

Griffin has a job, but he can't afford skyrocketing rents. Katrina washed much of New Orleans' low-income housing away.

FEMA officials said they will not evict anyone, but how long they'll be allowed to stay is an open question.

Still, FEMA officials say they're actually satisfied with how things stand three years after the storm.

Jim Stark, the director of FEMA's Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office, said he would give the overall recovery effort by the federal, state and local governments "a solid B."

"When you take into consideration that this truly was a catastrophe, hundreds of thousands of homes were affected. In fact, FEMA housed 143,000 families across the Gulf Coast," Stark told ABC News.