Give and take

Hurricane Katrina | Displaced residents of public housing are being well supplied by FEMA and others, but they are demanding more | Jamie Dean

BATON ROUGE, La. — On 62 acres of rural farmland on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, 436 white travel trailers sit in neat rows on gray gravel behind a chain-link fence near the town's mid-size airport. FEMA calls the trailer park "Renaissance Village," and the agency began moving displaced families in shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck last year.

Many of the families in Renaissance Village come from some of the hardest-hit areas of New Orleans, including the Ninth Ward, Lower Ninth Ward, and St. Bernard Parish. More than a year after Katrina drove the families from their homes, their neighborhoods lie in ruins, and a renaissance seems far away.

Wilbert Ross was one of the first evacuees to settle in the park after fleeing his flooded Ninth Ward home. Today Ross lives in a tiny trailer with a 20-year-old son, a 16-year-old daughter, her 19-month-old baby, and an 18-year-old daughter who's expecting a baby this month.