The Hotel "Solution" Calamity for Hurricane Sandy Victims

By JOSH DAWSEY

Almost 4,000 New York and New Jersey households displaced by superstorm Sandy remain camped in hotel rooms, an effort costing public agencies tens of millions of dollars and fraying the nerves of uprooted families entering a fourth month with no promise of permanent homes.

About 2,800 households stayed in hotel rooms Monday night in New York and New Jersey under a program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, officials said, while another 839 were in rooms paid for by New York City's Department of Homeless Services.

City Council members, at a hearing Tuesday on the management of New York's shelter after Sandy, urged city officials to move as many people as possible out of hotels and into permanent homes. Outside City Hall, protesters demanded more efforts to quickly find permanent housing for those affected by Sandy.

"We need a much more coordinated and aggressive case management system for these individuals and their families," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

Costs of the hotel program are mounting: So far, FEMA has spent $26.4 million in New Jersey and about $45.2 million in New York, according to officials in those states.

City officials couldn't immediately provide cost estimates, except to say that New York was paying an average of $236 per room per night, according to a spokeswoman for the homeless services department. Based on that room cost, the city spent at least $198,004 Monday night on the program. (Some households use more than one room.)

In New York, households in hotel rooms paid for by the Department of Homeless Services have risen to 839 on Feb. 5 from 557 on Nov. 25. City officials attributed the increase to lower temperatures, a campaign to attract those without housing and people exhausting their options of staying with friends—along with the closure of city hurricane shelters.

City officials also say they've taken in people who could not qualify for FEMA rental-assistance programs because they could not produce a pre-Sandy lease or other verification.

"You know the realities of housing in New York, many people have informal arrangements, where the landlord may or may not know they're there," said Seth Diamond, the Department of Homeless Services commissioner.

Those for whom hotel living is beginning to grow old include Chamelle Gibbs, 32 years old, formerly of the Rockaways, who lives in the Manhattan at Times Square Hotel with her husband and three daughters. They landed there after the Queens and Bronx shelters they were staying in closed.

The two older girls—Jaida, 9, and Chanel, 13—now attend P.S. 111 in Midtown. "The 9-year-old likes it, but for the 13-year-old, it's been a lot of change," Ms. Gibbs said. The family has no stove to cook meals and must travel far to see family members and friends. Typically, they eat dinner at McDonald's   or from food trucks, she said.

Her husband works as a dishwasher at an East Village restaurant, she said, while her job search was interrupted by Sandy."This is Manhattan," she said. "Everything is expensive. We don't have the money for this."

Officials, who point to a drop in overall rooms, say more than 81,000 households have applied for FEMA rental assistance, and thousands have moved into permanent homes. They'd like to end the programs, designed to be temporary until permanent arrangements are made, but officials from both FEMA and the city said they're expected to continue for at least months.

"The hotel rooms don't have a kitchen, they're generally one room, you may have three or four people staying in that same room...," said Mike Byrne, FEMA's top Sandy-recovery official in New York.

While the FEMA program, already extended a few times, is set to end Feb. 9, officials said they planned to seek further extensions.

About 20% of those living in the city's hotel rooms haven't responded to contact attempts by caseworkers, Mr. Diamond said. Another 104 are living in homeless shelters, according to the city. Mr. Diamond said officials from the city and various nonprofit groups have met with some residents daily, moving some to permanent housing.

Government officials struck a deal to allocate 2,500 affordable apartments for Sandy victims, but the program so far has resulted in few signed leases. Many residents say they can't afford the apartments restricted to those with low or middle incomes, while others don't want to leave their old neighborhoods.