Washington – Responding to an outpouring of criticism, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced 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, FEMA announced that it would stop paying most hotel bills 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 Gulf Coast 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 hotel rooms in Texas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, California, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Nevada will be able to remain, on the government tab, through Jan. 7, the date previously set only 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,” David Paulison, acting director of FEMA, said in announcing the revised deadlines at a news conference. “We want families in decent housing. We want them out of these hotels and motels and into apartments.”
The hotel program, started by the American Red Cross, has already cost the federal government about $300 million, or an average of about $59 per night per room. It was begun after emergency shelters were overwhelmed.
Mayor Bill White of Houston, one of many elected officials to criticize the Dec. 1 deadline, said he was pleased with FEMA’s response. Texas alone has evacuees in more than 18,100 hotel rooms, the most of any state, and most of them are in Houston.