In 2011, floods in the spring, and Tropical Storm Irene later that year destroyed more than 150 mobile homes and damaged hundreds of others. A meeting in Burlington Friday took stock of long term efforts to minimize future storm damage at mobile home parks.

The state says the Federal Emergency Management Agency has shown some flexibility and provided additional funds to people who lost mobile homes to Tropical Storm Irene. Officials see this as a positive development in what has sometimes been a rocky relationship between Vermont and the federal agency.

Vermont is providing additional tax relief to people whose mobile homes were damaged or destroyed during last year's spring flooding or from Tropical Storm Irene.

Mobile homes were hit particularly hard by the flooding last spring and during Tropical Storm Irene. There are now efforts underway to come up with a better financing model for mobile home owners and to design and build a mobile home that is energy-efficient and still affordable.

For owners of flood-ravaged mobile homes who need to borrow money to replace them, the mortgage market is an obstacle because the terms and eligibility requirements are different than they are for other homebuyers.

Only a handful of the families displaced by Tropical Storm Irene who were mobile home residents have been able to return to flooded parks. Many are living in temporary situations and facing the difficulty of making ends meet through the winter.

Crews have removed 68 mobile homes throughout Vermont that were heavily damaged from Irene-related flooding at no cost to the homeowners.