Federal Emergency Management Agency Requests Information On ADA Compliant Travel Trailers

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has released a request for information (RFI) on companies that are able to design and produce travel trailers that meet the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)/Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards (UFAS) for post-disaster temporary housing purposes.

Any company interested in responding to this request can find the full details here. The deadline for responses is November 30, 2020. Below is background information on the request.

For questions on the RFI, contact David Colbert at david.colbert@fema.dhs.gov or Matthew Rabkin at matthew.rabkin@fema.dhs.gov at FEMA.

BACKGROUND

The Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency provides temporary housing for disaster relief throughout the U.S. As part of its efforts to readily provide safe, secure and sanitary temporary housing for all individuals, FEMA is seeking companies that are able to design and produce travel trailers that meet the Americans with Disabilities Act/Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards for post-disaster temporary housing purposes.

When the need for post-disaster transportable temporary housing arises, FEMA will continue to rely on its current menu of housing options, including travel trailers. However, the available travel trailer options for housing individuals with disabilities who have accessibility needs are very limited. Consequently, the use of the travel trailer option is currently constrained to those without accessibility needs. If the standard travel trailer solutions cannot be deployed to assist individuals with accessibility limitations, the advantage of this option is significantly diminished. FEMA wishes to overcome this limitation.

Therefore, it is the intent and purpose of this request for information to challenge travel trailer manufacturers, as well as all other interested stakeholders, to leverage their industry knowledge and experience to develop innovative new designs and concepts in applying UFAS-compliant accessibility standards to travel trailers for FEMA transportable temporary housing use.

For this RFI, disaster temporary housing is classified as a towable RV, and may be a bumper pull travel trailer design, or fifth-wheel design, and may include expandable partial sidewalls (slide outs).