WASHINGTON — With almost 600,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in hotels and motels across the country, government officials are launching a massive effort to transfer them into more stable housing.
The drive, if successful, will significantly reduce what has become an $11-million-a-day tab, paid by U.S. taxpayers.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday October 16, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 53 words Type of Material: Correction
Hurricane evacuee -- Credits were transposed on two photographs accompanying an article in Friday's Section A about officials' attempts to find stable housing for Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Times photographer Spencer Weiner took the larger photo, showing a mobile home park; Jae C. Hong of Associated Press photographed the evacuee in her motel room.
But officials are encountering an array of obstacles and inefficiencies that have threatened their ability to move evacuees into long-term temporary housing.
Among the pressing issues: a shortage of housing that evacuees can afford, a widely scattered population that is difficult to track, local opposition to establishing trailer-park communities and a mismatch between the needs of the evacuees and the location and condition of potential housing.
For example, one plan would place evacuees in properties owned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD has identified more than 6,300 units -- mostly acquired through foreclosure -- in the 11 states most affected by the hurricanes, but only 1,800 are habitable, spokesman Brian Sullivan said. The rest require as much as $15,000 worth of repairs each.
Just after Katrina hit, the Federal Emergency Management Agency purchased tens of thousands of recreational vehicles and trailers for use by evacuees. But its plans for "cities" with hundreds of RVs have run into logistical difficulties and political resistance, with the areas widely derided as "FEMA-villes."
The housing crisis has become so severe that other federal agencies, such as Veterans Affairs and the Department of Agriculture, have been asked to identify possible housing in the buildings they control.
A further complication is the unwillingness of some evacuees to move into certain cities or neighborhoods for reasons that include a lack of public transportation or fear of an inhospitable reception. In Texas alone, there are as many as 7,000 evacuated families with what are described as special needs.
And even with the $2,385 that each family can get from FEMA to cover three months of rent, the ongoing costs of rent and utilities can be a daunting hurdle for evacuees who no longer have jobs, especially if they now are in areas with higher housing prices.
"If you don't have the resources, getting housing relocation assistance has proven to be problematic," said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
