Evacuees lose funding for hotels

NEW ORLEANS — About 12,000 families made homeless by last year's hurricanes began checking out of their federally funded hotel rooms around the country Monday after a federal judge let FEMA stop paying directly for their stays.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency promised the evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that they will still receive federal rent assistance that they can put toward hotel stays or other housing. But the agency no longer will pay for their hotel rooms directly.

Earlier Monday, attorneys for the evacuees pleaded with U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval for a reprieve, saying the rent assistance will not be enough for decent living accommodations or continued hotel stays.

"These people are going to be homeless. We've heard from a lot of people who are going to be sleeping in their cars," said Bill Quigley, a lawyer for the evacuees.

But Duval denied the request.

FEMA said the majority of those checking out had arranged for other housing.

About 10,500 families, or 88 percent of the 12,000 homeless families, have received rent-assistance checks from FEMA, said Libby Turner, the agency's transitional-housing director.

Some evacuees said they had nowhere to go except their own cars, a relative's couch or back to a shelter.

Monday marked the second wave of evacuees losing FEMA financing of their hotel rooms. Last week, the occupants of roughly 4,500 rooms lost FEMA funding after failing to ask the agency for extensions.