Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Hundreds of Katrina evacuees face eviction

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 29, 2006

Hundreds of hurricane evacuees around the country could be evicted in the coming weeks because the Federal Emergency Management Agency has stopped helping them pay the rent.

More than 12,600 households nationwide found out in April that they were going to lose their rent subsidies. Most were cut off on May 31 and must make a payment on their own at the end of this week or get out. In Texas, evacuees have until Friday or the end of July before their subsidies run out.

FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said he does not expect large numbers of people to be turned out on the street. Many have already lined up a place to live or did not need the assistance to begin with, he said.

FEMA paid the rent on apartments and houses for about 58,000 evacuee households as part of a special emergency program in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In April, the agency told 12,658 households that they no longer qualified.

McIntyre said evacuees were cut off if they had been homeless before the storm, were using the money for other needs or had been displaced by the hurricanes from housing they didn't own - "those living with Grandma when the storm occurred."

The initial cutoff date for all states was April 30, but FEMA extended it to May 31. The cutoff affects 3,900 evacuee households in Houston and 1,100 in Dallas.

[Last modified June 29, 2006, 06:30:01]