Thread: FEMA Providing Hotel Rooms for People in Shelters Since Sandy

FEMA Providing Hotel Rooms for People in Shelters Since Sandy

By Jesse Hamilton on November 03, 2012

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is issuing vouchers for hotel rooms to those stuck in emergency shelters because of superstorm Sandy and is rushing fuel to New York and New Jersey, agency Administrator Craig Fugate said.

FEMA activated a program for temporarily sheltering people who can’t return to storm-struck homes, Fugate said in a conference call with reporters today. Those in shelters in New York and New Jersey are eligible, he said.

“If they can move into a hotel or motel, it’s a little bit more comfortable for them,” Fugate said, adding that more than 18,000 are in shelters. “This is designed as an intermediate step,” and those whose homes are uninhabitable will be offered longer-term housing, he said.

While lights in Manhattan buildings flickered back on and subways returned to service today, other New York boroughs such as Staten Island and hard-hit areas in New Jersey still suffered power and fuel shortages. President Barack Obama directed the Defense Department yesterday to buy as much as 22 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel for affected communities, and Fugate said it’s arriving.

“They’ve already got some of the first fuel deliveries in,” Fugate said.
More than 122,000 people have applied for federal disaster help, according to the FEMA administrator, and $107 million in assistance has been approved so far. He didn’t say how much the hotel program would cost.

Red Cross

The Red Cross also has 4,200 volunteers working in the area, with “thousands more” on the way, said Red Cross Senior Vice President of Disaster Services Charley Shimanski. The organization is setting up warming shelters in preparation for another storm expected to bring colder weather.

“Social media is helping us drive our activities,”Shimanski said, describing a team the Red Cross has monitoring websites such as Twitter.com. “This is really a new and tremendous resource for the work we’re doing on this very, very large disaster.”

Obama spent time away from the campaign trail this morning to meet with emergency officials and members of his Cabinet at FEMA headquarters in Washington to discuss recovery efforts.

In a campaign appearance in Ohio after the meeting, Obama said the recovery will take “months” and he praised “leaders of different political parties working together to fix what’s broken.”

The president is urging his administration to “look around the corner and see if there are other resources that haven’t already been summoned to try to bring relief to these communities that are bearing the aftermath of the very difficult storm,” Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, told reporters aboard Air Force One today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jesse Hamilton in Washington at jhamilton33@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net

FEMA Providing Hotel Rooms for People in Shelters Since Sandy - Businessweek

UPDATE 1-Massive housing relief needed after Sandy as cold sets in

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Sun Nov 4, 2012 3:16pm EST
* Displaced to be kept close to home
* New York mayor says 30,000 to 40,000 need housing

By Edith Honan

NEW YORK, Nov 4 (Reuters) - With freezing temperatures forecast, tens of thousands of people hit by superstorm Sandy need temporary housing, New York officials said on Sunday, but it was not immediately clear where they could all be sheltered.

The number of homes and businesses without power has fallen to 1.9 million from a peak of 8.5 million since Sandy slammed the U.S. East Coast on Monday, authorities said early Sunday.

But nearly 1 million people in New Jersey and almost 730,000 in New York state are still without power, authorities said. Many homes lack heat or were severely damaged by the storm.

"People are in homes that are uninhabitable and it's going to become increasingly clear they are uninhabitable when the temperature drops," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a televised news conference. "Then we're going to have tens of thousands of people that are going to need housing right away."

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said that some people might not get power back for a very long time, a concern as temperatures are expected to approach freezing in New York City and even lower in northern suburbs early Monday.

A 71-year-old man died in New Jersey from the cold, state police said Sunday.

"They need to be relocated and we need to find them and find them housing," Gillibrand said.

Officials at the news conference did not put an exact figure on the number of people who will need temporary housing.

Immediate plans call for keeping those who have been displaced as near as possible to their homes, but where they will be housed was not immediately clear. There are few hotels in the New York City borough of Staten Island, for example.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that 30,000 to 40,000 people will need shelter, with about 20,000 from public housing. But where they will be put up is unclear, he said.

"We don't have a lot of empty housing in this city. It's a problem to find housing. We're not going to let anybody go sleeping in the street," Bloomberg said at a separate news conference. "But it's a challenge and we're working on this as fast as we can."
NUMBER SEEN FALLING
The number of displaced people should fall in two weeks to half the high end of the estimate, which was a worst-case estimate calculated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development based on "a lot going wrong," he said.

Earlier, the mayor urged people to go to local disaster sites.
"If you don't know where to go, stop a cop in the street, they'll help you," Bloomberg said.

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that 86,000 households have registered for assistance and FEMA has set aside $97 million for help.

The displacement recalls the massive relief effort for people made homeless in the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
FEMA has 400 people knocking on doors, but many more are needed, said New York Senator Charles Schumer.

The magnitude of Sandy's damage is still being calculated, let alone its cost. In Suffolk County, on eastern Long Island, 10,000 homes have been inundated, with at least 386 homes having suffered catastrophic damage, said chief deputy county executive Regina Calcaterra in an interview.

"We have areas that are devastated," she said.

Suffolk County has begun labeling homes "red," "yellow" and "green" based on their safety, and is sending electrical inspectors to homes labeled "yellow," Calcaterra said.

Katrina caused more damage than any other single disaster in U.S. history in 2005. About 300,000 homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable and 700,000 people were displaced, according to an October 2009 congressional report.

UPDATE 1-Massive housing relief needed after Sandy as cold sets in | Reuters