Evacuee relocation deadline extended

WASHINGTON – More than 400,000 people left homeless by Hurricane Katrina will remain in hotel rooms beyond the Oct. 15 deadline set for their relocation, the Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Tuesday, extending a program that is costing an estimated $8.3 million a day.

The agencies said the program, which extends to 48 states with most rooms clustered closest to the devastated area, would be extended indefinitely.

The hotel program had been established as a temporary measure, but efforts to house hurricane evacuees in trailer homes, on cruise ships or in market-rate apartments have largely failed. Instead, people have migrated from shelters into hotel rooms that are arranged for by the Red Cross and paid for by the federal government.

The Red Cross said that as of Sunday night, 438,030 people were living in 141,300 rooms, a number that has nearly doubled in the past two weeks.

“We’re trying to make sure no one falls through the cracks,” said FEMA spokeswoman Mary-Margaret Walker, who confirmed that the program would continue beyond Oct. 15 and that no new end date for it had been set.

The hotel program was conceived in the days immediately after Katrina. With shelters filled to bursting, many evacuees found refuge in motel rooms and were rapidly running out of money to pay their bills. The Red Cross, which underwrites hotel costs in smaller crises, asked FEMA to bankroll limited hotel stays for evacuees. FEMA agreed.