Hurricane Victims Still at Sea in L.A.

When Brian Kent’s 18-year marriage ended in June, breaking up his family of four children and one grandchild, he thought that would be the most painful experience of his life.

Then Hurricane Katrina struck in late August, destroying his New Orleans home, his antique car and the janitorial business he ran for 20 years. He has been living in Carson hotel rooms for more than five months, struggling to get back on his feet.

“This is worse than the divorce,” said the 50-year-old Ohio native who moved to New Orleans in 1985. “I’m living like a peasant.... I was living like a prince before. I didn’t have to beg, steal or borrow from anyone. But now I’m like a homeless person on the corner. It’s crazy.”

More than 5,000 hurricane victims came to Los Angeles County in the storm’s wake and were put up in local hotels. According to the Los Angeles chapter of the American Red Cross, many came to be near relatives; some came to escape crowded emergency shelters in Louisiana and Texas. Others came because Los Angeles sounded like a good place to start over.

Kent is one of 156 left, many of whom can’t move on by themselves because other housing options have fallen through, been delayed or are simply out of reach. What’s more, they face eviction as the government’s hotel program ends this month.

Evacuees who didn’t get an extension had to leave their hotels Tuesday, when there were 238 rooms in Los Angeles County paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. By the end of Tuesday, 82 people had left. Some, such as Kent, got an extension until Monday and others until March 1.

“I feel like it’s wrong,” said Marilyn Knowles of Hickory, Miss., who has been living at Extended StayAmerica in Gardena for four months while searching unsuccessfully for permanent housing.

She might move in with a sister, but doesn’t want to be a burden. “I feel like I don’t have a place to stay other than staying with my sister. It has my nerves really bad,” Knowles said.

FEMA has spent more than $522 million on housing at hotels and motels nationwide for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- $7.3 million in California -- since it took control from the American Red Cross in October.

Some of those left in hotels say the road to recovery has been paved with pitfalls.

Shelita Moore evacuated New Orleans, spent three weeks at Houston’s Astrodome, then came to Los Angeles through the help of Operation Homecoming USA, a faith-based organization that provides relief to hurricane victims. She is at the Extended StayAmerica in Gardena, but has to be out by Monday.

Operation Homecoming helped her find a two-bedroom apartment in Long Beach in December for $1,200 a month for herself and her two teenagers. That month, she received $2,300 from FEMA and gave it to the landlord as the first and last month’s rent.

But Moore didn’t want to leave the hotel until she could secure three months of rental assistance from FEMA because she didn’t have other funds to pay the rent. “I didn’t want to leave the hotel because once you’re out, you’re out,” she said.

Moore said she applied for further rental assistance but has not received any money from FEMA since January. FEMA told her the application was approved but has been put on hold until a duplication error was fixed, she said.

“I don’t personally have a problem with FEMA,” she said. “The only problem I see with FEMA is that they have a slow process, and I understand their process because there’s so many displaced survivors, so many people’s hand in the pot.”

But Moore admits that living under constant stress is beginning to take a toll. “I’m a strong person,” she said. But “even me -- I’m at a cracking point.... I’d rather pack up, go home and sit on the streets of New Orleans. At least I would be home where I’m used to.”

FEMA officials say they will continue to provide cash assistance to pay for housing for 18 months to evacuees who qualify. Every three months, roughly 700,000 people across the nation get $2,358 or more, said Nicol Andrews, a FEMA spokeswoman.

Andrews added that FEMA is “not designed to make their lives whole again like it was before the storm. It’s designed to get people back on their feet. Each case is different, and there’s always extenuating circumstances. We try to make sure they don’t fall through the cracks.”

But evacuees say they are close to the edge. At a news conference last week in the parking lot of Quality Inn South Bay in Carson, about a dozen evacuees and their supporters expressed anger and resentment over how the government was handling what they described as an impending “housing crisis.”

“We’re here because we’re concerned about the slowness of the process and lack of response from the government,” said Theresa King, of the Assn. Community Organization for Reform Now local chapter, a community organization that seeks to influence the decision-makers in the relief efforts. ACORN plans another rally downtown today. “People are struggling and nobody is helping them.”

Hurricane victim Knowles counts herself as an example. She has been rejected for disaster assistance despite being a part of the hotel program. In a letter sent Dec. 29, FEMA said Knowles was ineligible for housing assistance because of “insufficient damage” to the trailer that she rented in Hickory, Miss. The trailer has been renovated and passed a FEMA inspection, Knowles said.

FEMA officials went on to say in the letter that she could not be considered for assistance until she gave them information about her insurance settlement and her “unmet needs.”

But Knowles said that she never got an insurance settlement and that the only money she has received from FEMA was the $2,000 given to survivors on debit cards in September.

“I told them about my unmet needs, and that’s housing,” said Knowles, 53, who is disabled from a back injury and whose only income is $810 a month from Social Security.

Knowles is waiting for subsidized housing at Colonia Corona, a 100-unit apartment complex in North Hollywood. She has been accepted, pending a background check, according to the vice president of operations.

Knowles said she wants to stay in Los Angeles, where her three adult sons and her sister live. “I don’t want to go back dealing with hurricanes and tornadoes.”

Hurricane victim Tammy Chapman of Bogalusa, La., said she has been calling the FEMA help line every four or five days while trying to sort out her situation, and still hasn’t been told that she could apply for an extension to remain at the Extended StayAmerica in Gardena until March 1. She was told that she had to be out by Feb. 13. She is searching for subsidized housing for herself, her husband and 16-year-old son.

“I just feel like it’s really not enough time for us to find a place,” she said.

Hurricane victim Kent is even more disillusioned. He was still recovering from the breakup of his marriage when the storm hit, damaging his three-bedroom house in New Orleans, his 1966 Buick Electra 225 and his home-based business. After the storm, he came to Los Angeles where his brother and sister-in-law live to rebuild his life with their support. But it is the government’s support -- or lack of it -- that has failed him, he said.

“The government is treating me like a criminal, like we created the disaster,” said Kent, saying he was told he has to provide documents to FEMA showing that he lived in his home in New Orleans in order to qualify for the $2,358 every three months that FEMA will give hurricane victims for 18 months. “We shouldn’t have to do any of that,” Kent said. “This is the government’s responsibility.”

Meanwhile, Kent is trying to regain his footing. When he arrived in L.A., he lived at Quality Inn in Carson for four months before he became tired of living in a room without a microwave or cooking facilities. Now he is at Extended StayAmerica in Carson where there is a refrigerator, stove and microwave.

He has a new girlfriend and recently started working for ACORN as a telephone solicitor. Two of his four children and his granddaughter came to L.A. to consider relocating but have since returned to New Orleans.

Asked why he doesn’t return, Kent, who doesn’t know where he’ll live after the hotel program ends, said: “I can’t keep running. I gotta stop. I chose to be here, and I’m going to make it here.”