FEMA Broke Its Promise on Housing, Houston Mayor Says

Mayor Bill White of Houston accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday of breaking its promise to Hurricane Katrina evacuees by imposing strict limits on a housing relocation program as it stops thousands of hotel subsidies.

On Monday, FEMA gave major cities like Houston until Dec. 1 to sign leases for apartments for evacuees under its existing reimbursement program. The agency limited the leases to three months. On Tuesday, the agency announced that also as of Dec. 1 it would stop paying hotel bills for 50,000 families in hotels around the United States, except in Louisiana and Mississippi, where the cutoff date would be Jan. 7. "We can't get leases for three months," Mr. White told reporters after a City Council meeting. "Landlords won't do that."

"The occupants should be able to make the rent on their own with the federal assistance that is provided to them by FEMA," (FEMA spokesperson Nicol) Andrews said, adding that the agency would pay costs associated with ending leases.

Since the evacuation of New Orleans, Mayor White, a Democrat overwhelmingly re-elected on Nov. 8, has worked closely with FEMA and the Bush administration to house nearly 250,000 evacuees. In meetings with federal officials, he said, "they never ever told us in hours and hours of discussions they would suspend the apartment-leasing program immediately."

The problem with comparing the cost of additional assistance to victims of Katrina to the money we're throwing down a pit in Iraq is that it's too easy to spend and respend that money.

But, with $62 billion authorized already for Katrina relief and an estimated $110 billion in property damage not covered by insurance, it's hard not to point out that among the reasons why we should always be careful about how we spend our resources is that we never can know when there will be an emergency and we'll need those resources.

So it matters that Bush squandered those resources on what wasn't necessary leaving us less able to attend to what is.

November 17, 2005
FEMA Broke Its Promise on Housing, Houston Mayor Says
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and ERIC LIPTON

HOUSTON, Nov. 16 - Mayor Bill White of Houston accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday of breaking its promise to Hurricane Katrina evacuees by imposing strict limits on a housing relocation program as it stops thousands of hotel subsidies.

"Great nations, like good people, keep their word," Mr. White wrote in a letter about Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other senior emergency officials.

On Monday, FEMA gave major cities like Houston until Dec. 1 to sign leases for apartments for evacuees under its existing reimbursement program. The agency limited the leases to three months.

On Tuesday, the agency announced that also as of Dec. 1 it would stop paying hotel bills for 50,000 families in hotels around the United States, except in Louisiana and Mississippi, where the cutoff date would be Jan. 7.

Because of the three-month limit on leases, Mr. White said, the leasing for more than 19,000 people who are still in hotel and motel rooms in the Houston area was shutting down. The program, he said, has been placing up to 500 people a day, and he appealed to FEMA to rescind its order.

"We can't get leases for three months," Mr. White told reporters after a City Council meeting. "Landlords won't do that."

Without a program to lease apartments, he added, finding housing would be difficult because of the cutoff of hotel subsidies, an action that would have the greatest effect in Texas.

Many families in Houston hotels learned of the cutoff from fliers slipped under their doors. One guest at a motel in West Houston, 19 miles from downtown, Gwendolyn Kennedy, said she did not know where she would find a bed.

"I don't really want to move again," said Ms. Kennedy, a school bus driver in New Orleans and a part-time worker at a Wal-Mart store. "It's hard. Even though I don't have any furniture or anything, just my personal stuff, it's hard."

FEMA officials said it was time that evacuees moved out of emergency housing like hotels into more permanent homes, even if those would be temporary.

"We want to help people to get back on their feet, to become self-sustaining and to have some control over their destiny," a spokeswoman for the agency, Nicol Andrews, said. "It is just inhumane to leave a family stuck in a hotel room and not offer them an option that exists to move beyond that."

The three-month limit on leases, Ms. Andrews said, is part of an effort to phase out direct government-financed apartment rentals and instead provide evacuees with cash assistance to rent on their own. After the leases signed by the government expire as of March 1, she added, tenants would be able to take over the leases and use the federal aid to pay their rent.

"The occupants should be able to make the rent on their own with the federal assistance that is provided to them by FEMA," Ms. Andrews said, adding that the agency would pay costs associated with ending leases.

In Austin, another FEMA spokesman, Don Jacks, said that stopping the hotel subsidies would not force anyone to become homeless or lose a night sleeping in a bed.

"This is not an ending," Mr. Jacks said. "We're not forcing anyone out of hotels. Yes, we will stop paying for hotel rooms the night of Nov. 30, and on Dec. 1 these people will need to be ready to move."

Those unable to find apartments may be offered other interim accommodations, possibly even another hotel if necessary, he said, adding, "No one will be left on the street."

Since the evacuation of New Orleans, Mayor White, a Democrat overwhelmingly re-elected on Nov. 8, has worked closely with FEMA and the Bush administration to house nearly 250,000 evacuees. In meetings with federal officials, he said, "they never ever told us in hours and hours of discussions they would suspend the apartment-leasing program immediately."

Mr. White called the directive absurd and added, "I'm sure they'll change that today."

Aides said that he later spoke by telephone to a FEMA liaison aide here, Dennis Lee, but that the order remained unchanged.

A neighbor of Ms. Kennedy at the West Houston motel, Sonia Scott, and her fiancé, Philander Harris, along with two children in diapers, share a queen-size bed and cook meals in a microwave oven. They said they worried about finding an apartment.

"We were going to try to stick it out here until we could find something we could afford or get back to New Orleans," Ms. Scott said, "but now we have to find something sooner."

Mr. Harris said, "They gave me a voucher, and I have to find an apartment before the first - if I find an apartment - because not everyone is taking the voucher."

Mr. Jacks said FEMA had 51,000 people in 20,414 hotel and motel rooms at an average cost of $2,100 a month per room in Texas. The allowance for a two-bedroom apartment, he said, is $777 a month.

Some real estate professionals criticized the Nov. 30 cutoff. Doug Culkin, executive vice president of the National Apartment Association, which represents 32,000 builders, owners and developers, said his group had long encouraged FEMA to shift evacuees to apartments.

"They are trying to move 150,000 people in 15 days," Mr. Culkin said. "I don't think it is doable."

Ralph Blumenthal reported from Houston for this article, and Eric Liptonfrom Jackson, Miss. Maureen Balleza contributed reporting from Houston.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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