It's been more than two years since FEMA purchased millions of dollars worth of mobile homes for Hurricane Katrina and Rita victims--and two years later thousands of them are still sitting in Hope. Channel Seven's Heather Crawford has been investigating how much it is costing taxpayers.

Forget the fact that some desperately needy family could actually be living in one of these mobile homes. Two years after FEMA bought them, they continue to be a huge drain on the taxpayer.

In the small town of Hope Arkansas there are literally more FEMA emergency housing units than there are residents.

(Linnea Eversole, Montana) "It's like a sea of white roofs. It's just unbelievable. You can't describe it and people that don't live here who live in the west like we do--they have no idea."

It's like a gigantic trailer park at the Hope airport--except no one is living in any of the mobile homes.

Linnea Eversole from Montana came here to take pictures to show her friends back home.

(Eversole) "It was unbelievable. I cannot believe that's our tax dollars at work. Everyone needs to write their congressman about this. Something needs to be done."

FEMA is storing thousands of mobile homes in Hope, and what may surprise you is practically all of them are brand new. They have never been lived in and have just sat here unoccupied for more than two years.

(Congressman Mike Ross, (D) 4^th District) "After they bought them, they decided they wouldn't locate them in a flood plain. And guess what? Everybody who lost their home and needed housing lived in a flood plain."

So instead of being put to use, they sit empty.

(Senator Mark Pryor, (D) Arkansas) "It's a story of incompetence. It's a story of very very bad government policy and just the inability for FEMA to function the way it should."

In addition to the mobile homes, FEMA is also storing about 11,000 travel-trailers in Hope that have been used. They were being auctioned off, but due to the presence of potentially dangerous levels of formaldehyde they are now no longer being sold.

(Eric Smith, FEMA Head of Logistics) "We're working with Centers for Disease Control and Health and Human Services to complete an assessment on the feasibility of standards that are acceptable for formaldehyde, and based on that assessment--when we receive that assessment--a decision will be made as to whether we will continue the sales of the travel-trailers or dispose of them by some other means."

Hope isn't the only location in the country where FEMA is storing its emergency housing units, but it is by far the largest. FEMA originally signed a two-year lease with the city of Hope to use the land, and the mayor says the agency is now in the process of extending it for at least another year.

The cost is $300,000 annually--money that can only be used for the Hope Municipal Airport.

(Dennis Ramsey, Hope Mayor) "We've been in discussion for the last year that this may be what's called a semi-permanent facility. We've heard talk of 8-10 years, but at a reduced inventory out here than what's here now."

The cost to the lease the land is just a small fraction of what the mobile homes cost. FEMA says the price tag for each one in 2005 was about $33,000. Today about 7,000 are sitting in Hope unused--that's $231 million worth.

Plus, FEMA spent $4.5 million to put down gravel on 140 acres so the mobile homes and trailers wouldn't sink.

(Ross) "I mean this stuff is so crazy you couldn't make it up. Again, it's a symbol of what's wrong with FEMA."

Tack on the cost of the 11,000 used travel-trailers that aren't being sold because of formaldehyde, and that's an additional $187 million (travel-trailers cost $17,000 each).

And then there are 45 employees who are paid to work at the site, and operational costs, which FEMA says totals more than a half-million annually. That's a total of more than $424 million out of taxpayers pockets.

(Smith) "We are taking measures, and we have then to make sure we are good stewards of the taxpayers money."

Smith says FEMA was just trying to be prepared for one of the most devastating natural disaster this country has experienced.

(Smith) "We balanced the need to provide immediate assistance to citizens, and balanced that need for fiscal responsibility, and we leaned towards making sure the citizens on the Gulf Coast had adequate housing."

Still taxpayers like Milford Eversole say they are fed up.

(Milford Eversole, Hope Resident) "Eventually we just thought they are going to have to get rid of these someday, but it just seems like they're not making any attempt to get rid of the trailers--not making any attempt to clean this out. And what it boils down to is the taxpayers are paying quite a bit of money on something that shouldn't be the way it is today."

You may be wondering what condition the mobile homes are in after being exposed to the elements for more than 24 months. Thursday on Nightside we'll take you inside some of them and let you see for yourselves how they've held up.