FEMA Tells Katrina Evacuees To Exit Hotels In 15 Days
wow, the poor evacuees are fucked :(
"Fifteen days to get out. That's the warning the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees staying in hotels Tuesday, The Associated Press reported.
Federal officials told evacuees that on Dec. 1 the government would stop paying hotel bills for evacuees living in government-subsidized hotels and that they would have to find their own housing.
The Associated Press reported that officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency acknowledged that evacuees living in storm-damaged Mississippi and Louisiana might have trouble finding alternative housing. But about the best FEMA could offer was the possibility of two-week extensions of the deadline for residents of those two states.
There is a sufficient supply of apartments elsewhere in the nation to house the evacuees, officials told AP. But they were unclear how, or whether, the government might help in finding and paying for accommodations.
"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."
In a memo sent Monday to FEMA officials, David Garratt, the agency's acting director of recovery, said that starting Dec. 1 FEMA would no longer reimburse states for new leases to house storm victims. And on March 1, FEMA will stop paying for existing leases that many states cosigned with evacuees, even though many run for a year or more.
The cutoff would hit especially hard in states with the largest numbers of evacuees, such as Texas and Georgia.
In the memo, Garratt said victims might still be eligible for individual assistance, some of which could be used for rent. But it was unclear whether those now in hotels would be provided with individual aid as part of the effort to move them elsewhere.
In a telephone news conference Tuesday, FEMA officials said only that they would work to notify victims of "all available options.''
Under federal law, FEMA can provide disaster-stricken families with up to $26,200 in aid, and the agency recently announced that it would pay out the full sum to about 60,000 households in the worst-hit areas of Mississippi and Louisiana.
But it has approved only about $4,500 in aid payments to an additional 450,000 displaced families. The second of those payments, part of a three-month apartment assistance program, is set to expire Dec. 23.
In all, FEMA said it had doled out $1.2 billion in transitional housing assistance to more than 500,000 households. Included in that figure was $274 million for hotel rooms.
Garratt said in his memo that, in addition to no longer paying for hotel rooms and ending reimbursements to states for housing storm victims, FEMA also would end aid for "cruise ships, travel trailers … and other fixed facilities" by March 1.
Officials were unable to clarify late Tuesday whether that meant the agency would terminate its controversial contract for cruise ships and would no longer deliver trailers after that date. The only exception to the March 1 deadline is for "state and local employee camps."
Housing advocates told The Washington Post that 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 told The Post that "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."
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