05:15 PM CST on Thursday, November 17, 2005

MICHAEL GRACZYK / Associated Press

HOUSTON -- Mayor Bill White has complained in an angry letter to the federal government that FEMA blindsided city officials with a new deadline of Dec. 1 to move Katrina refugees out of hotels.

White also objected to a mandate that refugees move into apartments with three-month leases, noting that few landlords offer such short leases, thereby sharply reducing the number of FEMA-qualified apartments.

"Why would FEMA restrict or eliminate the supply of apartments at the same time we are trying to move 19,000 people out of more costly hotels?" he said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

The letter, dated Wednesday, demanded an immediate reply. The letter was also sent to David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other top executives at the Homeland Security Department.

There was no immediate response Thursday from officials with FEMA and with the Homeland Security Department.

FEMA outlined its new plan Tuesday, setting the deadline as a goal to have evacuees out of hotels and into trailers, mobile homes or apartments until they find permanent homes. Throughout Texas, 51,000 hurricane victims are still living in hotel and motel rooms.

FEMA said leaflets were being slipped under hotel doors and teams were going out, informing evacuees of their options. But Katrina refugee Calvin Jamison and nine relatives cramped in a hotel in Dallas said they were surprised to hear about the deadline.

Jamison, who had just finished a phone call with FEMA hours earlier, said, "It's just like a big surprise, just like the flood was a big surprise."

Jamison said he and his family were tired of the two-room living arrangement but aren't ready to move on.

"It's cramped. It's stressful. It's bad for your nutrition," Jamison said. "All you do is sleep all day. You can't really do nothing else."

With no transportation, no money and no shortage of administrative obstacles, finding housing has been a futile effort for Jamison, 21. He said he does not know what will happen in two weeks.

"I don't think that's enough time," he said.

Texas' emergency management coordinator on Thursday told the state Senate Finance Committee that the state won't allow Louisiana hurricane evacuees to be put out of their hotels by the Dec. 1 deadline. He added, though, that he wasn't sure how the state would prevent it.

White spokesman Frank Michel said Thursday the mayor had not heard back from FEMA.

White said that in discussions in September, when thousands of evacuees began arriving in Houston primarily from devastated Louisiana, FEMA encouraged extensions of apartment leases from six months to a year, broadening the availability of apartments.

"Never, ever was some immediate suspension of the apartment program before Dec. 1 discussed in numerous conversations with me or others in Houston," the mayor said in his letter.

According to figures from the mayor's office, the city has moved about 41,000 people from hotels into apartments over the past 70 days.

"Today the apartment market is even tighter than in September," White wrote. "It is not realistic to assume the remaining hotel population can be moved to apartments in the next 15 days."