Evacuees Face an Eviction Deadline

The quiet, sun-filled lobby at a Comfort Inn here is worlds away from the confusion and raw emotion of last fall, when long lines of hurricane survivors waited hopefully for a room.

Last week, the 30 or so evacuees still registered at the hotel occasionally wandered through the lobby, sometimes asking a desk clerk for toothpaste or their mail. On top of the front desk was a sheaf of notices that had also been slipped under their doors: “Dear Katrina/Rita Evacuee,” it read. “You must begin looking for longer-term housing immediately.”

Pamela Burnett, juggling foam plates stacked with waffles from the breakfast buffet, said she was ready to move on. Her home in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward is gone, but last week she signed a lease for a threebedroom rental house on Houston’s south side. Because her rent will be covered under a Section 8 housing plan for lowincome people, a city inspector must sign off on the property.

“There’s been a lot of waiting,” she said. “I’m ready to go on now.”

The clock is running out for an estimated 28,000 hurricane evacuees still living in hotels in Houston and elsewhere. After granting several extensions, the federal government says that by March 1 it will no longer pay for hotel rooms. For many, the assistance has already ended. In New Orleans, civil rights lawyers asked for a temporary restraining order Sunday to stop evictions set to take place today.

Burnett said she was forced to leave her first rental house in Houston last fall when the owner stopped paying the mortgage. She then stayed at her daughter’s apartment, but checked into a hotel two weeks ago.

For those willing to navigate federal and local bureaucracy, she said, help is there. Burnett said she had received $19,000 in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds -- enough for daily necessities, furniture and appliances for the house, and the first car she has owned: a used, apple-red minivan she uses to drive her children to school.

Burnett, 40, who worked as a hotel housekeeper in New Orleans, said some people had not taken the initiative to learn about the available programs. “They could have been out of here if they wanted to,” she said. “They don’t want to do right.”

But Julie Neuroth said her attempts to find safe, affordable housing had been frustrated by wary apartment managers and government employees who gave conflicting information.

“Apartments don’t want to rent to evacuees,” she said. “A few evacuees have acted bad, and the rest of us are paying for it. When they see you have a FEMA voucher, all of the sudden there are no apartments available. There’s a lot of discrimination.”

Neuroth, 41, said she was wiped out financially after Hurricane Rita, which hit the Texas-Louisiana border Sept. 24.

A burly man who would only identify himself as Ron said he had been a deputy sheriff in Orleans Parish but couldn’t find suitable work in Houston.

Without a job, he can’t qualify for apartments in decent neighborhoods, he said. Though government agencies had provided lists of available apartments, they were “not somewhere I’d want to live,” he said. “We’re all from New Orleans, but we’re not all alike.” When FEMA stops paying for his hotel room, he expects to move to his parents’ house in northern Louisiana.

The cost of the housing program over the last five months is estimated at $522 million.

A FEMA spokesman said the agency would continue to help people find places to live after the March deadline.