Many evacuees haven't filed for hotel extension

According to FEMA, only 40 percent of the 6,000 hurricane evacuees staying in Texas hotels have applied to stay past Feb. 7 — meaning there could be a jump in the number of homeless.

With 3,490 hotel rooms still occupied in Greater Houston, a large number of families and individuals could be evicted in a couple of weeks.

"Instantly, we could be looking at a 30 to 40 percent increase in homeless people on the streets," said Thao Costis, an executive vice president with SEARCH, a Houston-based service provider for the homeless. "Our shelters are already filled to the gills with people who were here. We'll do what we can, but our resources are pretty maxed out."

It sounds like the FEMA hotel program is pretty messed up all around — officials said some people who weren't eligible for the program have been taking advantage of it, and as evacuees continue applying for extensions on their hotel stays, some of them have no idea what they'll do when the government stops paying their bills.

Gloria Carter, 41, has been staying at a hotel in Webster since she was forced to leave her condemned apartment in Lake Charles, La., in December. The single mother of three children and an older son couldn't find any vacant places in her hometown, so she came to the Houston area hoping to find work and assistance for rent.

Carter has applied for FEMA's Individual Assistance Program, which provides long-term housing assistance for natural-disaster victims, and has already registered to have her hotel stay extended until Feb. 13. But she has gotten no solid answers to her question: "What do we do at that point in time?"

Meanwhile, some evacuees have run into delays in seeking individual FEMA assistance, which would allow them to get money for apartments or other housing for up to 18 months. Applicants who haven't gotten an answer on individual assistance by Monday will be allowed to stay in hotels until March 1.