Bush checks into hotel in New Orleans

WASHINGTON – President Bush is showing off the progress in post-hurricane New Orleans, dining with officials in the French Quarter and staying overnight in a hotel, while focusing on a need to speed the building of temporary housing for people who cannot yet go home.

Bush was getting an update on rebuilding from Louisiana officials over dinner Monday night in the French Quarter, where there are increasing signs of normalcy. Still, most stores and businesses remain closed, few people are about and many other parts of the city remain ruined, even if mostly dry.

On his only other overnight in the city a month ago, Bush had to bunk on the USS Iwo Jima, which had been docked near downtown to help with the relief effort. This time, improvements in the city mean he was able to stay in a hotel.

Today, Bush – accompanied by his wife, Laura – is to help at a site in Covington, La., just north of New Orleans, where the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity is building new homes for storm victims.

That stop allows Bush to shine a spotlight on an issue he said last week was a less-than-stellar piece of the federal government’s continuing response to Katrina.

While praising some areas, the president said the government could “probably do a better job” arranging for temporary housing for the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their houses in the storm and aren’t likely to have homes to return to for months, if not longer.

Bush had said previously that everyone being housed in shelters should by mid-October be in apartments, trailers or, in some cases, hotels as they look for permanent housing. Though the number is down significantly from the high of 250,000 in shelters just after the hurricane hit, the government said more than 32,000 evacuees from Katrina and Rita still remained in 468 shelters as of last weekend.

“We want to help people get back into their communities that maybe have suffered significant damage or destruction, and help get the private sector going again in those areas so it can help with the rebuilding efforts,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in previewing the trip.

From Covington today, Bush is to fly to the coastal Mississippi town of Pass Christian to attend the reopening of an elementary school.

The trip was Bush’s eighth to the storm zone since Katrina struck on Aug. 29.