Donate or sell? : Goats and Soda: NPR

FEMA plans to sell thousands of remaining rolling homes in Texas.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency sent the trailers to the temporarily homeless families after the passage of Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. But they were not all used. Now, FEMA is auctioning the remains online to the public with a minimum bid of $ 100 for trailers ranging from one bedroom units valued at $ 57,354 to three-bedroom units worth $ 70,965.

This practice is controversial (more on this later).

And this raises the question: what happens to surplus humanitarian aid?

Bassam Michel Ibrahim, Head of Global Logistics at the Norwegian Refugee Council, an international aid group, believes that a surplus of humanitarian supplies should be a rare event. According to his experience, relief organizations are constantly faced with a lack of funding and supplies.

According to Ibrahim, help assignments usually go through an intense planning process to ensure that all supplies are delivered and used as intended. This detailed process allows aid groups to tell their donors how their money is being used, which means there are almost no leftovers.

If there is a surplus, Ibrahim says it's usually because of problems beyond their control – such as a conflict or a landslide cutting off the only road that leads to a village – occur that prevent them from providing help.

Nevertheless, surpluses occur.

Guillaume Brumagne, logistics manager for Doctors Without Borders, said the medical aid group regularly handled the remaining stocks as their teams brought many items (drugs, medical equipment and shelter) upon arrival in a country. a health crisis. Once the crisis is over and it's time to cut costs, they must understand what to do with what's left over.

"The general rule within [Doctors Without Borders] is always trying to see how these items can benefit another partner in the country, "Brumagne said.

Brumagne explains that, whether it is a used tent or unused medical equipment, they try to give it to a similar actor in the area – perhaps the Ministry of Health, a local health center or another medical charity. If they can not find someone in the medical field who can use the article, they donate it so as to always help the local population. Doctors Without Borders, for example, donated tents to create more classroom spaces for schools.

The only thing they try to avoid is to give supplies to someone who will then sell them.

"Our job is to provide people with totally free, accessible and non-discriminatory help of any kind," said Brumagne. "Even if in the end we do not use the help ourselves, we want to find a way to benefit people who are supposed to benefit, without them having to pay for it."

Ibrahim and Brumagne claim that they have never seen a reason to sell help instead of giving it away.

"Why would we do it?" Ibrahim said. "There are always more needs than we can satisfy."

Other aid agencies, including those in the United States government, are also trying to donate surplus assets for disaster relief. But in some cases, like Texas, some branches of the US government sell things. In fact, there are official ways to do this, that the excess supplies are caravans, tents, office supplies or whatever. According to the US General Services Administration (GSA), federal agencies may sell unnecessary goods through the GSA auction system to the public if no other government agency or voluntary organization is present. interested.

FEMA's official policy to the NPR states that when agency caravans are deemed "unsuitable for survivors of a disaster elsewhere", FEMA can either auction them or sell them to current occupants.

As a result of Hurricane Harvey, FEMA has been criticized for selling mobile homes at "advantageous prices after 18 months of use or the first sign of minor damage". Since then, the agency has stated that it sells mobile homes at a "fair market value adjusted", and not at discounted prices or cents per dollar. The official policy provided by FEMA to NPR does not specify at what age or in what condition the units are offered for sale.

Although the US government willingly sells some disaster relief supplies, the regulations prohibit the sale of military and humanitarian meal rations distributed by the government. Thus, if you see them offered by an online retailer, at prices such as 100 USD for a 10-meal box on eBay, they are probably sold by the recipients themselves by the company that prepares them.

Janet Nelson, who is co-owner of TheEpicenter.com, an Oregon-based company that sells emergency supplies, says her company only distributes excessive daily food rations from manufacturers. When the government does not buy the entire order from a manufacturer, the manufacturer repackages the kits for civilian use and sells them to resellers such as Nelson. She says the last time they sold daily humanitarian rations, it was just after Hurricane Katrina.

In addition, it was reported that FEMA tents were used during the failure of the Fyre Festival, a luxury music festival held on an island in the Bahamas in April 2017, which quickly transformed into an epic failure, ranging from housing to meals to security.

Traditional media and social media have widely reported that the remaining emergency FEMA emergency tents were hosting festival goers, who had spent thousands of dollars to attend.

This statement is repeated in two new documentaries about the festival.

But this is not the case. Clay Kimsey, the manufacturer's sales representative (Shelter Systems), said that the tents had been purchased in new condition through the intermediary of a third-party vendor, who "was not a humanitarian group ".

"Yes, these were our structures," he says, and they sometimes sold their tents to humanitarian organizations and government agencies. In the case of the Fyre Festival, they were sold for recreational purposes during an event that was catastrophic.

Joanne Lu is an independent journalist who covers poverty and inequality around the world. His work appeared in Humanosphère, The Guardian, Global Washington and The war is boring. Follow her on Twitter: @joannelu