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New Orleans evacuee Chris Saulsberry with breakfast at the Westway Motor Inn. Meals were changed after residents complained. (WNYC/Beth Fertig)

NEW YORK, NY November 11, 2005 —It’s been two-and - half months since Hurricane Katrina forced more than half a million residents of the New Orleans area out of their homes. Most of those evacuees are scattered throughout Louisiana and Texas. But almost every state has accepted some, including New York. As WNYC’s Beth Fertig reports, hundreds of evacuees are still living in hotels right here in New York City.

REPORTER: Almost 25 hundred evacuees came to New York after Hurricane Katrina. Some moved in with family members, or were able to go back home. But hundreds more are waiting to see if they can make a new start here. What they’re finding, though, is that the Big Apple isn’t exactly the Big Easy.

Last month, 31 year-old Chris Saulsberry wound up at the Westway Motor Inn by Laguardia Airport with dozens of other evacuees. Their rooms are paid for by the federal government. FEMA is spending about 300 thousand dollars a week in New York for 330 rooms at 7 different hotels. Down in the basement, a conference room has been turned into a makeshift dining area where meals are delivered in boxes piled onto a table.

SAULSBERRY: You don’t know what it is until you open it.

REPORTER: Saulsberry opens the cardboard lid on one of the trays. Inside are two waffles, a tiny potato and two cold strips of bacon. It resembles an airplane meal but it’s even less appealing.

SAULSBERRY: Usually like if you don’t come down here the second they bring it it’s going to be cold. And like a church donated the microwave but we can’t put the plates in the microwave so it just stays cold.

REPORTER: The manager of the Westway Motor Inn got the Red Cross to hire a new caterer this week after complaints by the residents. The hotel also got donations of clothing, which are piled on another table, along with maps.

SAULSBERRY: Here they have some metro maps but no metro cards. You’re kind of stuck.

REPORTER: Saulsberry came here with his wife and friends in mid-October. Their homes in New Orleans were flooded and they lost their jobs because of the hurricane. But despite filling out government forms they’ve gotten no leads on employment or housing. Saulsberry and his friend Carl Page can’t believe FEMA expects their 23-hundred dollar rental grant to last for 3 months.

PAGE: That’s not enough at all, especially here in NY.

SAULSBERRY: What can $2000 do anywhere. Even in New Orleans, $2000 you may be able to get your apartment and get your utilities on for a month. But this is New York! Every time I look at an apartment, a 1BR the least expensive I’ve seen is like $1200.

REPORTER: Their friend Curtis LeBlanc is also having a rough adjustment. He and his wife are staying with a family in Brooklyn they met through a local church.

LEBLANC: One time we tried to go take care of some business in Manhattan and we tried to go park the car for about an hour or so, and they charged me $30 for 2 hours. Thirty dollars! I was like man if I’d known that I’d have just got on the train.

REPORTER: The evacuees say they’re having sleepless nights worrying about everything they lost in New Orleans. Having relied on the government for assistance, Saulsberry says they now feel like castaways in a far-flung corner of New York.

SAULSBERRY: Never been to Queens before, didn’t know how to do anything, didn’t know about the Metrocards. We were just out here and it felt like they pushed us to the side and threw us away.

REPORTER: Of course, New York has never been easy. And the city already has almost 40 thousand homeless families and individuals. But officials say they’re working to help these latest newcomers adjust. The Department of Homeless Services recently signed a contract with a group of social service providers. Commissioner Linda Gibbs says they’ll send caseworkers directly to the evacuees staying in hotels.

GIBBS: Our goal is to reach out broadly and to identify any housing unit, any landlord who would be willing to offer an apartment that would be appropriate to a Katrina evacuee to rent.

REPORTER: New York already created a Disaster Assistance Center in Lower Manhattan. Officials say their goal was to provide one-stop shopping. Evacuees can register with different local agencies including the department of health, children’s services, and the department of aging. They can also meet with FEMA and the Red Cross.

WOMAN: Are you planning on relocating to NY or planning on going back to New Orleans. MAN: Going back.

REPORTER: New arrivals are still trickling into the center. But some say they’ve gotten little help. Thalia LeBlanc says she and her husband, Curtis, never heard back after filling out all their government forms.

THALIA LEBLANC: There’s nothing you can really accomplish there except applying for Medicaid and applying for food stamps. Everything else like the employment table, the labor table, you submit your resume, she’ll look up a few jobs and that’s it, you never hear from them again.

REPORTER: The city says the assistance center was only intended to get the ball rolling. That’s why it’s now sending caseworkers directly to the hotels. Each city has taken its own approach following Katrina. Houston famously handed out a year’s worth of rental vouchers. FEMA spokesman James McIntyre says his agency leaves all decisions to individual states and cities and then reimburses them 75 percent of cost.

MCINTYRE: They can implement programs of their own, those are not FEMA programs. These are programs each of the host cities and host states are implementing themselves to work with getting people into more permanent solutions.

REPORTER: He also says FEMA can give out bigger housing grants of up to 26 thousand dollars once a lease is signed. But housing advocates say those terms are vague. Bertha Lewis runs the New York chapter of the community group ACORN, which was based in New Orleans. She’s been holding meetings with city housing officials to move things along.

LEWIS: People need to be home for the holidays. We’re looking for 100 families to be out by Thanksgiving we hope to make that goal. We want another 100 families by Xmas. This doesn’t solve the problem but it goes a long way toward having a start because nothing’s been done.

SAULSBERRY AND PAGE: They gave us free gum. THALIA LEBLANC: You don’t take gum from strangers, man! PAGE: No they were free samples like in the store.

REPORTER: Out in Queens, Thalia LeBlanc and her husband Curtis are visiting their friends Chris Saulsberry and Carl Page at the Westway Motor Inn. They have an R&B band called Crescendo and they’re hoping to get some work playing local clubs. Curtis LeBlanc says he knows they picked a difficult city to start over. They just want a chance.

LEBLANC: We really want to go and be like we were back in New Orleans. We want to be part of the economy, we want jobs, we want to pay our taxes and receive things and the enjoyments we received before this. We don’t want to live off of the system. We just want to be able to get something to put us on our feet so we can do like we did prior to the storm.

REPORTER: Nationally, there are almost 70 thousand evacuees still staying in hotels. FEMA says it wants them all moved out by December first. However, that goal may not be so firm because previous deadlines have all been extended. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.