Homes at the end of the road

NOEL Jones, 8, and his 12-year-old buddy Wendell “Papa” Williams, were strolling recently through their post-Katrina trailer park -- a self-contained universe of gravel streets, rows of white box homes and dogs on short chains.

It was hot and humid, and seven hours before the start of hurricane season. There is no playground here, no basketball court. The boys were a little bored.

They showed off the metal fence they jump to get to the swamp, with its alligators and snapping turtles. Soon they would show off the trammeled part of the fence that leads to their clubhouse in the woods.

But first, they ran into Rendell Johnson, 28, coming home from his forklift job at the shipyard. Sometimes Johnson pays the boys to do odd jobs, but not tonight.

He and his wife were saving up for the moment when they, like the residents of the other 67 trailers here, would be asked to leave. No one had asked them yet, but they figured it was inevitable: The Pascagoula City Council had stripped this park and two others of their zoning status two weeks earlier.

“If I was able to go somewhere else, I wouldn’t be here,” Johnson said angrily, noting Hurricane Katrina had flooded him out of his old apartment.

The boys walked on. Their clubhouse was a clearing in the trash-strewn woods, decorated with old truck tires and seat cushions. Papa flopped down, his hands behind his head, and described his ideal home: “I’d like to live in a palace, or a mansion,” he said. “Or just in a plain, big house -- with a good family.”

Their families are among hundreds in Pascagoula -- and thousands more across the Southeast -- that remain in trailers the Federal Emergency Management Agency set up after the August 2005 hurricane, many of them clustered on temporary sites. The agency, which typically provides temporary housing for 18 months after a disaster, has extended the deadline for leaving the trailers to March 2009, an acknowledgment of the difficulties many face in relocating.

But Pascagoula is one of numerous local governments that are hoping to move families out of the trailers long before that deadline. Local politicians see the trailer parks as hotbeds of crime, and a blight to neighborhoods. Also, no one thinks the trailers will be safe in the next big hurricane.

Pascagoula City Manager Kay J. Kell said now that the parks are illegal, the city will ask residents to come in so local officials can help them find permanent housing. “You’ve got too many people living in very compact borders,” Kell said. “ It’s a very depressing place to live.”

The city has not yet set an eviction date. That is because many families have no place to go, said Reilly Morse, a lawyer with the Mississippi Center for Justice, a public-interest law firm that advocates for the poor. Though millions of dollars in government subsidies has been earmarked for building affordable post-storm housing in Mississippi, few units have been built, Morse said. Rents at many apartment complexes, meanwhile, have skyrocketed.

“Affordable, permanent solutions for people in FEMA trailers just haven’t materialized,” said Morse, who has filed a legal challenge to Pascagoula’s refusal to renew zoning permits for the parks.

So, for the time being, this is Noel and Papa’s home: an unnamed, unmarked grid of trailers, set in the crook of a middle-class subdivision, on a lot next to a U.S. Army Reserve Center.

Apart from the trash in the woods, the place is clean and orderly -- though no more charming than military barracks. All the trailers here are three-bedroom units, the kind the government set aside for large families. They are indistinguishable save for differing eight-digit serial numbers stamped on their sides. Between them, patches of sand are cluttered with bikes and barbecue grills.

The boys know most of the other children who run around here. Most are black, like Noel and Papa, but there are white and Latino kids too. Sometimes they get along. Sometimes they don’t.

The boys know the parents who are working hard but can’t afford to leave. They know the parents who aren’t working at all. They know the parents on disability, the parents with personal problems -- the kinds whom social workers would call the “hard to house” even if they weren’t hurricane survivors.

For better or for worse, this is their neighborhood.

“We feel like they shouldn’t kick us out,” Papa said. “Because we’ve been here a really long time.”

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PAPA has big brown eyes that easily betray his emotions. He is clean-cut in a striped T-shirt and sneakers, with a spry, athletic body like a coiled spring.

Hoping to introduce his mom, he bounded up the wooden steps of his trailer.

The interior was spartan and relatively spacious: There was a kitchenette, and a table and chairs. Baby photos were tacked to a flimsy off-white wall. A cigarette burned in an ashtray.

Papa walked into a bedroom, following the relentless boom of a gangster rap track, and emerged alone.

“She says she can’t come out,” he said. “She’s sick.”

He walked back out into the late-afternoon sun. Parents were coming home from work. A few dozen children were running around the park, tracing circles on bikes or throwing a football on the gravel streets.

Noel was a few yards from Papa’s trailer asking if he could do chores for the man he called Mr. Bobby. Bobby Cochran, 40, and his wife each had two pit bull puppies in their arms. They were showing them to some young men in an idling car. Cochran, a mechanic, sells dogs as a side job.

“I’ll tell you what, Noel,” Cochran said, looking down at the boy. “You find my wheelbarrow for me, I’ll give you $5. And you tell me who’s got it.”

Noel considered the offer and ran off.

Cochran’s rental home was destroyed by Katrina. Now he is hoping to buy his trailer from FEMA. But he isn’t sure where he will relocate once the park closes down. “I’m trying to find some property to put it on, but it’s hard -- everybody’s buying everything up,” he said.

Cochran and his wife seemed to treat Noel with both tenderness and suspicion. This is a tough place for a kid to grow up, Cochran said. A lot of drugs, a lot of violence.

Noel ran back to them, his gray-green eyes flashing. He didn’t have the wheelbarrow, but he delivered the names of two suspects. Cochran said he figured as much.

Noel walked on. Some tough-looking young men in a black Ford Expedition rolled down the gravel drive, scowling. A bass speaker rattled the windows.

“That’s Chris,” Noel said. “They just ride around.”

Noel wanted to introduce his mom, too, in lot No. 56. Parked outside was an immaculate caramel-colored Cadillac. A set of shiny custom rims was locked in the back seat. The car belonged to his cousin’s boyfriend, he said.

Noel disappeared inside the trailer, and popped out again. His mom, who works full time at a Popeyes restaurant, wasn’t around either.

Before the storm, Noel’s family lived in a notoriously dilapidated apartment complex known as Carver Village. It was heavily damaged by Katrina, and later torn down.

“There was a lot of shooting and stuff,” he said. “People getting killed. They used to hide guns there when people was running from the police. I found one once but I didn’t touch it, ‘cause I knew what it was.”

Police say crime is a problem in the trailer park as well: Sgt. Ronnie Castille, a spokesman for the Pascagoula Police Department, said there had been at least two shootings here. Residents say the trailer park on Jefferson Avenue has quieted down since private security guards contracted by FEMA began patrolling several weeks ago to supplement the police.

Next, Noel visited the trailer of Tyrone Allen Sr., a disabled shipyard worker. At 63, Allen is slim, gruff and elegant, with a conked slick of hair and blue polyester pants over black loafers. Sometimes he has work for the kids.

Allen had spent the day at a real estate agent’s office, trying to find a more permanent home for himself, his five children and a grandson. It hadn’t been easy. “I’ve been looking for a place since I got in here,” he said.

The agents told Allen that they might have something for him next week. Tonight, Allen was in no mood to give Noel work. He had hired a shade-tree mechanic to install a new heater core in his 1993 Buick Skylark, and was busy watching the progress.

“I ain’t got nothing for you,” he muttered to the boy.

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THE sun sank. Neighbors stepped outside to talk with neighbors. Noel was in front of Sandria Davison’s trailer, trying to grab a stick of sour-apple taffy from 7-year-old Leslie Sanchez. Leslie’s big sister Abigail shoved Noel away.

He got up in her face. “What are you going to try to do about it?” he said.

She gave a little snort of disgust. “Don’t touch me!”

Most of the children in the park had gravitated to Davison’s trailer. Her large flat-screen Sony TV had been playing the Disney Channel all day, and her freezer, as always, was full of frozen blueberry drink in little plastic foam cups, free for the taking.

Tonight, she had cooked a huge batch of fried fish and French fries for anyone who was hungry. A preacher was on TV, shouting to his flock: Spiritual gifts! Health! Prosperity! It is mine!

The kids used to call Davison, 42, “the candy lady,” because she had tried to sell them candy. But she was too softhearted and gave most of it away. Now many of them call her “Mama.”

She keeps her door open to everyone, even Papa and Noel, who have a reputation in the park as troublemakers. Earlier in the day, Papa had run to Davison’s trailer crying after arguing with his mother.

Sometimes, on Sundays, Davison drives a group of kids across the Escatawba River to the Prayer Tower Pentecostal Holiness Church, where, as “evangelist-prophetess-minister,” she sings gospel with five siblings.

Fannie Mae has offered to rent Davison a home in suburban Amherst, N.Y., for one year at $1 a month rent. Amherst is about a 400-mile drive from New York City, where she hopes to launch a career as a gospel star. Even so, she doesn’t know how she would afford the move.

After dinner, Davison went out on the gravel drive. She and her niece Keyana Butler swung a jump rope. A dozen children, including Noel, lined up. Abigail accused Noel of cutting in line. So the boy got in her face again. Davison grabbed him and told him to behave. Noel said he would not.

“ ‘Cause I don’t like Mexicans,” he said.

“Don’t you ever say that!” she said, grabbing harder.

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THE kids came and went as the jump rope turned. After a few minutes, Noel and Papa came running around the corner, shouting wildly. One of the girls had thrown rocks at them, they said. The boys were going to gather relatives. There was going to be a confrontation.

Soon there was a crowd. A few black teens yelled at Liliana Torres, Abigail’s mother, and her boyfriend. The boyfriend, a refinery worker, stood in the gravel street, glaring at his tormentors.

Some black adults gathered around. A number of them, including Davison, called for calm, and advised the boyfriend to stand down.

Papa’s mother, LeShandra Cook, emerged from her trailer in bare feet, her head cocked back. “You want to fight?” she screamed at the boyfriend. “Let’s fight!”

He declined, and the crowd dispersed just as three police cars pulled up. They had come on a burglary call.

The boyfriend, who did not give his name, walked over to an officer and told him how kids in the trailer park were constantly harassing him and his family. He said he didn’t know what the problem was.

“The problem is,” the officer said, “that unfortunately, you’re in a FEMA park.”

The next morning was calm. Someone had put a boombox outside; sing-songy Southern raps skittered across the gravel drive. Noel and his mother, Melody Jones, were hanging out on their steps. If the park closed, said Jones, 31, she and her three children might move into her mother’s house, in nearby Moss Point. It would be crowded, but they could manage.

Papa had retreated to Davison’s trailer. He was watching TV with half a dozen other kids, their lips blue from the frozen treats.

The night before, after Papa’s mother had cooled down, the unemployed woman was asked what she would do with herself and her children if the park closed down. Her response: “I really don’t know.”

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richard.fausset@latimes.com