03 Aug Motel misery: Hundreds fled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico only to end up functionally homeless in Florida
Original Post www.cnn.com
Kissimmee, Florida (CNN)With no running water, no power and no school for her kids, Carmen “Millie” Santiago fled Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean last fall. Like thousands of evacuees, she landed here in central Florida. And, like hundreds, she’s still stuck in a motel.
Seven months after the storm, the quick-witted 50-year-old with chestnut hair and a warm smile has become the de facto mayor of “El Super Ocho,” or Super 8, the beige motel in the shadow of Disney World where she lives with her husband and two children. She keeps business cards of apartment managers, case workers and potential employers spread out on a table by the motel room door — anything that might help her neighbors figure out how to survive the complex and increasingly eternal limbo they find themselves in.
This week, hundreds of evacuees were told they would be booted from the motels where they’ve lived rent-free on assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. On Friday at 1 p.m., after mounting pressure from members of Congress, Puerto Rico’s governor and evacuees like Millie, as well as multiple inquiries from CNN, FEMA announced it would extend the motel assistance for Maria survivors until May 14.
Millie and others didn’t know where they would have gone without the extension. And after what one advocate described as a week of panic, they still don’t know what will happen next month.
She does know what happens to evacuees who lose the motel vouchers, though: There’s the mother of two who says she slept several nights in a car after FEMA’s motel-room assistance ran out in March. There’s the family of eight — four children, their parents and grandparents — who slept together in a motel room with only two beds. In that room on a recent day, a 7-year-old girl ate spaghetti for lunch using the end of a plastic coat hanger as a utensil.
Play Video
Hurricane Maria evacuees living in FL motels 03:45
Some families say they’ve relocated four, five and six times to avoid sleeping on the streets.
Meanwhile, shelters near Kissimmee, the southern suburb of Orlando that’s come to be known as “Puerto Rico north,” are full. Low-income housing is unavailable. Rents are out of reach. Non-profits have been sapped of resources. And federal aid for the evacuees either is running out or was never offered.
At issue are two FEMA housing programs. One, called the Transitional Shelter Assistance program, pays motel bills for people whose homes were damaged in Puerto Rico, even if the disaster victims left the island. That program, according to FEMA documents, was designed to be used for about two weeks. It has been extended repeatedly. More than 1,200 cases in the 50 states had been determined by FEMA to be ineligible for continued assistance after this week, according to documents provided to CNN, with about half of those cases in Florida.
Sonia Burgos and her grandchildren, ages 14 and 12, live at the Super 8 motel in Kissimmee, Florida.
Sonia Burgos and her grandchildren, ages 14 and 12, live at the Super 8 motel in Kissimmee, Florida.
In a letter to FEMA on Wednesday, Carlos Mercader, executive director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, requested an “unconditional extension” of the motel program.