Tennessee mobile home manufacturer not impressed with FEMA

Clayton Homes, headquartered in East Tennessee, is the nation's largest mobile home manufacturer. Clayton is a successful local family owned and operated company - so successful they were recently purchased by Warren Buffet. Apparently they aren't too happy with FEMA:

Next time the Federal Emergency Management Agency calls Clayton Homes Inc., CEO Kevin Clayton will think long and hard about answering the phone.

It's not that the manufactured-housing executive has turned cold-hearted. He's just a ticked-off taxpayer.

Of the 4,500 housing units Blount County-based Clayton sold last year to FEMA for use by victims of Hurricane Katrina, none are being lived in, Clayton said.

All of the Clayton-built homes - along with thousands of units built by other manufactured-housing companies - are in storage at a former military base near Hope, Ark., Clayton said.

"In hindsight, I wish we'd never been asked to produce the units," Clayton said. "The main factor is that taxpayers - all of us - paid for these homes that have not been utilized."

The article says they stepped up operations and their employees worked overtime to deliver on their contract. It also says it cost them retail business and disrupted their inventory supplies to resellers.

Another article in a different local paper today says that FEMA set a completion deadline of Dec. 15, 2005. The company met the deadline by working overtime and pulling units from retail inventory, but FEMA didn't take delivery until 60 days after the deadline.

A Clayton spokesperson said the mobile homes haven't been deployed because of zoning issues and resistance by residents, who are concerned about FEMA temporary housing becoming permanent housing as it has in Florida following other hurricanes.

According to the article, FEMA says "that because FEMA responds to many disasters each year, it makes sense for the agency to have surplus units in storage" and that the units will "eventually be used."