NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 13 --- Thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina became transients again on Monday, wheeling their entire lives onto the street on luggage carts or dragging bulging garbage bags through hotel lobbies, when the federal government stopped paying their hotel bills.
In the largest single step in its phaseout of emergency housing assistance for victims of the hurricane, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ended the hotel payments for 12,000 families across the country, including 4,400 now living in New Orleans.
Many evacuees who have returned to New Orleans have begun to rebuild, enroll their children in school or, like Dominique Handy, get a job.
She had $1,800 from FEMA, which was supposed to pay for three months' rent --- an impossibility in a city so strapped for housing that officials could not even find a place to serve as an emergency shelter.
The phaseout of hotel rooms is the end of an aid program that cost more than a half-billion dollars and at its peak housed 85,000 families on a single night.
FEMA, which is ending the program over the strenuous protests of Louisiana officials, says it is time for families to find a more permanent situation.
Of the 12,000 families whose benefit ended Monday, 10,500 have received rental assistance or a trailer, said Libby Turner, head of the Hurricane Katrina/Rita Transitional Housing Unit at FEMA.
Houston, Atlanta and other cities with large populations of evacuees passed the deadline with little incident, but in New Orleans several hotels called private security squads armed with rifles after employees were threatened.
The agency's critics say it is unfair to ask destitute families to make long-term housing decisions when little progress has been made on restoring homes in New Orleans.
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