US: Thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina could be homeless again next week when the US federal government stops paying for their hotel rooms.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has told 53,000 evacuees in 41 states that they must leave the hotels by December 1st or start paying the bills themselves.
Fema wants the hurricane victims to move into more permanent accommodation and has promised to pay the rent on new homes for three months.
But officials and political leaders in the states that have accepted most evacuees say there are not enough homes available and that next week's deadline could force thousands onto the streets.
"If the current Fema deadlines are enforced, this newly-announced policy will lead to a complex - perhaps intractable - housing crisis as communities scramble to find suitable, available housing for those victims," Texas governor Rick Perry, a Republican, told Fema in a letter last Friday.
Human rights activist the Rev Jesse Jackson has written to President Bush, calling for the deadline to be extended and suggesting that some evacuees could be housed in unused military bases near New Orleans.
"This latest action by Fema will leave thousands of displaced families homeless. It will make a disaster out of the disaster relief efforts," he said.
Most evacuees have received a $2,358 housing allowance and Fema spokesman Marty Bahamonde said they could use that money to stay in hotels if they did not want to move.
"People are free to use that housing allowance however they choose. A hotel or motel room may not be the best use of that money, but that's their option," he said.
Fema originally planned to house most hurricane victims in mobile homes while they were waiting for permanent housing but that plan has proved more expensive and complicated than expected.
The agency hoped to set up 15,000 mobile homes each week but only 4,000 families have moved into mobile homes in Louisiana so far.
Fema failed to consider local regulations governing where mobile homes can be sited and the difficulty of creating an infrastructure to deal with a sudden influx of temporary homes.
Evacuees hunting for an apartment over the next few days are hampered by the fact that many offices and businesses will be closed for four days from Thursday, which is Thanksgiving Day.
Housing groups say that many landlords will be reluctant to accept tenants who can only guarantee that they will stay for three months - the period during which Fema will pay the rent.
The federal government has already spent more than $18 billion on Hurricane Katrina relief, as much as Washington has allocated to reconstructing Iraq over the past two years.
Most of the money has gone on removing debris, creating temporary housing and giving direct assistance to evacuees.
Much bigger bills lie ahead when work starts on rebuilding roads, bridges, hospitals and other public infrastructure, including the New Orleans levees that Katrina's floodwaters overwhelmed.
Congress approved more than $60 billion in aid immediately after the hurricane but as Katrina's memory fades, legislators have started questioning the cost of reconstruction.
Tim Kusky, a professor of earth sciences at St Louis University, said this week that New Orleans is doomed to sink below the sea and that, instead of rebuilding the city, the government should start moving people out.
In a CBS programme that Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco tried to have postponed, Prof Kusky said that New Orleans' "slow, steady slide into the sea was sped up enormously by Hurricane Katrina" and that its residents should "face the fact that their city will be below sea level in 90 years".