Judge Lets FEMA Evict 12,000 Families at Hotels

The clock ran out Monday for about 12,000 families left homeless by last year’s hurricanes when a judge agreed to let the federal government cut them from a program that had paid for housing at hotels across the nation.

Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that those evacuated after hurricanes Katrina and Rita would continue to get financial aid that could be used to pay for lodging or to repair homes.

After granting several extensions and spending about $522 million on lodging since September, FEMA announced earlier this year that it would not pay for hotel rooms after March 1.

“People kind of get into a routine living in these hotels, and it’s not necessarily a good routine,” FEMA spokesman Butch Kinerney said Monday. “You’re living in a hotel, so you don’t have a washer or dryer. It’s harder to get your kids registered in school. It’s just harder to feel like you’re not living a nomadic life.”

Attorneys for the evacuees appealed over the weekend to U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr., asking for a temporary restraining order to stop the evictions.

The motion claimed that, among other things, the financial assistance from FEMA wasn’t enough to pay for reasonable housing. It also said that bureaucratic mistakes at the agency had prevented thousands of families from getting the trailers they had been promised and that the evictions would force thousands of hurricane victims to live on the streets.

Duval denied the temporary restraining order Monday.

“We have hundreds of declarations from people telling us that they aren’t getting the checks that FEMA has promised them, or they’ve been promised trailers months ago -- and nothing has come of those promises,” said William P. Quigley, director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center and one of the attorneys who filed the motion. “The government is making these families victims all over again.”

Monday’s evictions represented the second wave of people leaving hotels because their FEMA funding had expired.

Of the 12,000 families cut off Monday, about 10,500 have received funds from FEMA to help pay for rent, Kinerney said. The rest were not eligible for help because their homes were not as badly damaged.

Some hoteliers here, concerned about possible problems because of the evictions, hired extra security.

At the Cotton Exchange Hotel in downtown New Orleans, private guards -- toting shotguns and wearing bullet-proof vests underneath black jackets with “SWAT” embroidered on the back -- stared straight ahead as evacuees left the building.

Taped to the hotel’s front door was a notice to evacuees, telling them they “must make other arrangements” to pay the hotel bill if they were staying.

“It’s an emotional situation,” said hotel spokeswoman Libby Wunsch. “We just wanted to make sure all of our guests and staff are safe.”

Ashley Bates, 20, walked quickly across the hotel’s cream-toned lobby Monday afternoon and said goodbye to her friend Tracey Hunter, 28.

Bates, who is waiting for a trailer, was granted an extension from FEMA to stay at the hotel until March 1.

Hunter, who had been sleeping on the floor of another evacuee’s hotel room and never registered with FEMA, decided to leave New Orleans.

She plans to move in with relatives living in the Chicago area.

“That’s a little scary, having those guys with guns here,” Bates said as she carried a pair of Hunter’s suitcases to a nearby pickup truck. “What do they think we’re going to do? Riot?”

Said Hunter: “There’s no way I’m staying in this town. There has to be another place where I can go and make a fresh start.”