"The second is there are some communities that we thought originally would take mobile homes that have decided they don't want them. And we're not going to cram mobile homes down the throats of communities in Louisiana and the Gulf - and other parts of the Gulf Coast"
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“Cram mobile homes down the throats” is the kind of crude, bodily metaphor that’s supposed to read as plainspoken resolve. Coming from Michael Chertoff, then the face of federal homeland security in the post-Katrina wreckage, it also reveals the moral bookkeeping behind “recovery.” The line is framed as respect for local choice: some towns don’t want trailer parks, so Washington won’t force the issue. But the subtext is sharper: the federal government is more worried about offending gatekeepers than housing displaced people quickly.
The phrasing does two things at once. It casts communities as potential victims of federal overreach, while quietly recasting evacuees as an imposition - something that can be “crammed” into someone else’s body politic. That rhetorical move matters. After Katrina, “temporary” housing wasn’t just logistics; it was a fight over who gets to come back, where poverty is allowed to be visible, and how much disorder affluent neighborhoods will tolerate. Local resistance to mobile homes often carried the genteel language of zoning, aesthetics, and “property values,” but the underlying fear was permanence: that emergency shelter becomes a new, stigmatized underclass geography.
Chertoff’s intent is to sound pragmatic and deferential, to signal he’s not the kind of bureaucrat who bulldozes local sensibilities. In context, it’s also an alibi for scarcity and delay. When the federal official tasked with crisis response adopts the rhetoric of “we won’t impose,” he’s really describing a hierarchy of priorities: political comfort first, human need second.
The phrasing does two things at once. It casts communities as potential victims of federal overreach, while quietly recasting evacuees as an imposition - something that can be “crammed” into someone else’s body politic. That rhetorical move matters. After Katrina, “temporary” housing wasn’t just logistics; it was a fight over who gets to come back, where poverty is allowed to be visible, and how much disorder affluent neighborhoods will tolerate. Local resistance to mobile homes often carried the genteel language of zoning, aesthetics, and “property values,” but the underlying fear was permanence: that emergency shelter becomes a new, stigmatized underclass geography.
Chertoff’s intent is to sound pragmatic and deferential, to signal he’s not the kind of bureaucrat who bulldozes local sensibilities. In context, it’s also an alibi for scarcity and delay. When the federal official tasked with crisis response adopts the rhetoric of “we won’t impose,” he’s really describing a hierarchy of priorities: political comfort first, human need second.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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