http://us.cnn.com/2005/US/11/16/hurricanes...s.ap/index.html


FEMA sets deadline for evacuees in hotel rooms
Thousands must find longer-term housing by December 1
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Posted: 10:41 a.m. EST (15:41 GMT)


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency is stepping up the pressure on an estimated 53,000 families still staying in hotel rooms after losing their homes to hurricanes Katrina and Rita to get into longer-term housing by the end of the month.

The agency said Tuesday it will stop paying hotel bills December 1 for most of the families, even though housing advocates say they fear they won't have enough time to find other places.

Most of the people still staying in hotels and motels are in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and Mississippi.

FEMA previously had set the December deadline as a goal to have evacuees out of hotels and into travel trailers, mobile homes or apartments until they find permanent homes.

Tuesday's announcement marked the first time the agency said it would cease directly paying for hotel rooms that have cost FEMA $274 million since the storms struck.

FEMA granted exceptions to evacuees in hotels in Louisiana and Mississippi, where there is a shortage of housing. Evacuees in those states have until January 7 to find homes, said David Garratt, FEMA's acting director of recovery. He said 9,830 households remain in hotels in Louisiana and 2,508 in Mississippi.

"There are still too many people living in hotel rooms, and we want to help them get into longer-term homes before the holidays," FEMA acting Director R. David Paulison said in a statement. "Across the country, there are readily available, longer-term housing solutions for these victims that can give greater privacy and stability than hotel and motel rooms.

"Those affected by these storms should have the opportunity to become self-reliant again and reclaim some normalcy in their lives."

After December 1, most hurricane evacuees who aren't ready to leave hotels will have to pay the costs out of pocket -- either with FEMA rental housing aid they receive or from their own funds.

Katrina hit on August 29, followed by Rita on September 24.

Houston, Texas, Mayor Bill White demanded that FEMA grant a similar extension to the city as it moves 19,158 evacuees out of city hotels.

"We have moved more evacuees out of hotels than any other city has ever had in hotels," White said in a statement. "So we encourage those new to it to ask us, not tell us, how to do it."

The hotel program marked FEMA's second step in finding homes for hundreds of thousands of evacuees displaced after the storms. Over the last month, FEMA has moved 8,748 people out of emergency shelters and into hotels and other transitional housing, Garratt said. As of Tuesday, 2,491 evacuees remain in shelters, down from a high of 321,000, he said.

Also by December 1, thousands of evacuees who receive FEMA housing aid in vouchers issued though state or local authorities will have to sign a rental lease to remain eligible for the funding. Three months later, on March 1, FEMA will end the voucher program and send housing aid directly to evacuees who qualify.

Additionally, the six-month leases for evacuees living on cruise ships will end March 1, Garratt said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose state welcomed many Katrina evacuees, said: "We recognize and agree with FEMA's decision to make personal responsibility a part of the hurricane recovery process. However, my great concern is that there is still no long-term housing plan for the hundreds of thousands of Katrina victims who lost everything -- including their homes -- as a result of the storm, and come March 1 many of them may find themselves with no long-term housing options."

Housing advocates said FEMA has not given evacuees enough time to find homes and sign leases -- a process that can take months in rental markets already nearing capacity.

So far, FEMA says it has provided $1.2 billion in transitional housing assistance to more than 500,000 households displaced by the hurricanes.

The Red Cross had not seen details of the plan Tuesday, but spokesman Michael Spencer said "the time has passed for emergency housing."

"Interim housing is the responsibility of the state and federal government, and we have to assume they have a plan in place," he said.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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There are evacuees in Alabama living in tents. And the low tomorrow night is supposed to be 32.

(Is it any wonder we haven't been able to get too worried about that quake in Asia?)

WASHINGTON (IWR News Parody) - Scott McClellan in his morning press conference today revealed the reason why the federal response to the Katrina crisis was slow. "It took us three days to convince the president that New Orleans is really in the United States and not in Canada. And couple that with the fact that we used the same planners in Homeland Security that we did in the Iraq War, and I think you get the picture," said McClellan.

Did FEMA say anything about local employment opportunities for the Katrina refugees, now that they have been officially declared self-sufficient. This is an incredible act of violence, to turn these people out of their homes and make them, in turn, prisoners, refugees and now outcasts, homeless in unfamiliar surroundings and cut off from all resources. This is part of an over-all pattern of this administration's crimes against humanity, and now that it is no longer front-page, it isn't even happening. But New Orleans will be whiter, and I guess that is what is important. I'm beginning to understand why these people, who have suffered so much, have been sent to places like Montana and Utah. They will not alter the political climate in their newly assigned communities, they will not be allowed o assimilate. If anything, there will be a backlash reaction against their presence. This is, I am afraid, only the beginning of a very ugly Republican social experiment, and few if any are standing with these refugees. Certainly not enough to bring this to a humanitarian resolution. Like the right of return to their homes.

Isn't it funny how these terrible catastrophes always have a way of benefiting the Republicans?

The US gov't has shown how little it cares for the non-white, non-rich, non R voting citizens of its country through this tragic event.

Seeing as how most of the people affected probably voted Dem anyway last election, not much will change I think.

It's interesting to me that the geography of the Katrina damage hasn't been mentioned more. It cut a swath from Mobile to New Orleans. That's Bush country! And how many, like me, are close enough to that that it could easily have been me in that situation. And for those of us who didn't lose everything, we've been helelping those who did. Our hotels were full of them, our churches were neck-deep in helping these people. Bush country has been hard hit by the knowledge that we could easily have been on the wrong side of this. And how things would have gone if we were.

There are still people sleeping in tents in AL, MS, and LA, usually in the yard of their demolished home. And winter is here. You wait til you start hearing about Americans freezing to death in their own yard.

And then the Feds, in their wisdom, shipped the evacuees all over the country, so they could spread their story *all over the country*. From a PR standpoint, that was dumb, dumb, dumb. Nothing like word of mouth, you know.

We are creating a system of "gulags" here in the US, and to most of us they shall remain invisible. Nobody will know they have been imprisoned unless they have been "relocated." When local white backlash becomes too great, and incarceration ceases to be an effective management tool, the internees will simply be relocated again, leaving a trail of cities and towns that have "had enough" of "colored people from somewhere else." Poor people of color in the US will become what the European Jews and Gypsys were in the middle ages, a necessary evil to be exploited and cursed at the same time. bushco and its heirs will make Israel's treatment of the Palestinians seem quaint by comparison.