Mark's Notebook

FEMA Tells 150,000 in Hotels to Exit In 15 Days

Washington Post

No More Free Rooms For Katrina Evacuees

By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Federal Emergency Management Agency yesterday warned an estimated 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in government-subsidized hotels that they have until Dec. 1 to find other housing before it stops paying for their rooms.

The announcement effectively starts the clock ticking toward a new exodus of Gulf Coast storm victims who have been living rent-free in 5,700 hotels in 51 states and U.S. territories under the $273 million program.

Under FEMA's decision, the evacuees will have 15 days to lease apartments, make other arrangements or begin paying their own bills.

Families in 12,338 hotel rooms in Louisiana and Mississippi may get a reprieve. Because of those states' devastated housing stocks, officials may seek extensions of hotel aid two weeks at a time until Jan. 7, at the discretion of the top FEMA official in each state, officials said.

The phaseout of the hotel program marks the latest effort by FEMA to manage the largest national housing crisis since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

"Unless they have some serious plan for helping move people from hotels into apartments ... as of December 1, there's going to be a lot of homeless people," said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. "It appears that FEMA is working very hard to make itself so unreliable that state and local governments will say, 'We can't depend on FEMA in the future.' I can't imagine what other explanation there can be for this level of incompetence."

Nationwide, the number of Katrina evacuees living in shelters has fallen to 2,491, down from a high of 321,000 shortly after the storm, FEMA said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501704.
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Last updated Tuesday 13 May 2008