After Complaints, FEMA Extends Deadline for Evacuees in Hotels

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November 23, 2005


After Complaints, FEMA Extends Deadline for Evacuees in Hotels
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 - Responding to an outpouring of criticism, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced on Tuesday that most of the estimated 150,000 hurricane evacuees still living in hotel rooms would have an extra month to find other housing before the federal government stops footing the bill.

A week ago, the agency said it would stop paying most hotel bills as of Dec. 1. The goal was to encourage evacuees to find less expensive and more permanent housing while they awaited the reconstruction of New Orleans and other cities devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

But the deadline was widely condemned as unreasonable and harsh in Congress, in state capitals and in city halls across the South.

Under the new deadline, evacuees living in hotels in Texas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, California, Tennessee, Arkansas and Nevada will be able to remain, on the government's account, through Jan. 7, the date previously set just for Louisiana and Mississippi. About 35,000 hotel rooms are occupied by evacuees in those states.

For those staying in 3,700 rooms in other states, the new deadline will be Dec. 15 instead of Dec. 1.

"We are not kicking people out into the streets," R. David Paulison, acting director of FEMA, said in announcing the revised deadlines at a news conference here. "We want families in decent housing."

The hotel program, started by the American Red Cross, has already cost the federal government about $300 million, or an average of about $59 a night per room. It was begun after emergency shelters were overwhelmed by the number of people fleeing the coast.

Mayor Bill White of Houston, one of many elected officials to criticize the Dec. 1 deadline, said he was pleased with the agency's response. Texas alone has evacuees in more than 18,100 hotel rooms, the most of any state, and the greatest number of those are in Houston.

Mayor White said FEMA should have realized all along that the Dec. 1 deadline did not make sense, a failure he attributed to excessive levels of bureaucracy between the agency's local representatives in Texas and top officials in Washington.

"Between the local people and the top seem to be about seven or eight layers of people who need to get a life," Mr. White said.

FEMA also agreed on Tuesday to back down temporarily from blocking cities like Houston from signing apartment leases on behalf of hurricane victims, Nicol Andrews, an agency spokeswoman, said. Houston has been moving about 400 people a day into apartments from hotels, offering government-financed housing with one-year leases.

FEMA wants the evacuees to sign their own leases, using federal rent subsidies. But Houston officials said they feared that would slow the pace of movement to apartments. Now, instead of banning new government-sponsored leases as of Dec. 1, Ms. Andrews said, the agency will allow cities to sign leases on behalf of evacuees at least until the federally financed hotel program has ended.

Maureen M. Balleza contributed reporting from Houston for this article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/national/nationalspecial/23fema.html?th&emc=th