]Victoria Johnson said she became "petrified" when she heard on the evening news that the government would stop paying hotel bills for storm evacuees in two weeks.
"What are we going to do? Where are we going to go?" she asked her daughter. That started a frenzy of phone calls and planning among her family members and other storm evacuees at the Extended Stay America in Duluth.
On Wednesday, Johnson attended a housing seminar for evacuees in Lawrence*ville. "Right now everybody is in a panic," said Johnson, a 48-year-old former nursing home clerk whose rental home in New Orleans was just about washed away. "My daughter is on the phone with FEMA right now. It's a mess."
Wednesday was a harried day for many of the estimated 12,000 evacuees still living in Georgia hotel rooms. After two months of living free of charge, evacuees received word Tuesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would stop paying hotel bills Dec. 1. They can still receive FEMA housing aid, but they must register for it by calling 1-800-621-3362. Then they have to find a new place, sign a lease and move.
The two-week deadline shocked some state officials and advocates for the poor, who say it is unrealistic and will send some evacuees into homeless shelters or onto the street.
About 30 religious leaders in the Regional Council of Churches of Atlanta held a conference call Wednesday to discuss helping evacuees meet the deadline. They scheduled an emergency meeting for today.
"We don't know how to mobilize and do this thing," said executive director Roy Craft.
Panic spread Wednesday to several charities and agencies that have been helping evacuees find housing. They say they are receiving many additional requests and need to speed up their efforts, but they wonder how they can do it with their funding and staff.
On Wednesday, hundreds of evacuees called Travelers Aid of Metropolitian Atlanta, one of the nonprofit groups helping to relocate evacuees. "Some of them were crying, some of them were hysterical, some of them were yelling and mad, and some were just stunned," said deputy director Kay Bernier.
Her group is asking for more funding from organizations, but she fears that she will soon see long lines of homeless evacuees asking for help. That was the scene when the evacuees first came to Atlanta in September. But this time, she said, "they will become our regular customers."
State Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) said the time has come for the evacuees to get out of the hotels.
"If they are working-bodied citizens, they need to be down at the Department of Labor looking for a job, not at a hotel," said Johnson, president pro tem of the Senate. "At some point the government can't be everybody's mama."
Johnson said he believes some evacuees may be taking advantage of the government's generosity. "If you got a free hotel or you have to go look for a job ... you're going to take the free hotel room," he said. After two months of help, the evacuees should not be treated differently from other homeless people — "and [the others] are not getting debit cards and free hotel rooms," Johnson said.
That sentiment worries Bernier, who fears it could hamper efforts to raise more money for evacuees. "People always think others can snap back from devastation faster, because it's not you," Bernier said.
Georgia Emergency Management Agency spokesman Ken Davis said the state may have to consider opening shelters for homeless evacuees, as was done when many first arrived in Georgia.
FEMA officials say they believe they can clear the evacuees out of the hotels by Dec. 1 and that those who need rental assistance will receive it.
"We are going to be working very hard over the next few weeks to get to every evacuee in every hotel and present them with their options," said Susie Webb, a FEMA spokeswoman who works at the agency's regional offices in Atlanta.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Sonny Perdue said the state will hold FEMA responsible for getting the evacuees " into a situation where they can provide for themselves."
"At some point, the evacuees need to take on the personal responsibility of finding employment, finding housing and taking care of their families," spokeswoman Heather Hedrick said.
Evacuee Janice Ramsey said she had been traveling back and forth to Biloxi, Miss., identifying and burying her father, who died in the flood. She spent Wednesday at the Lawrenceville housing seminar, along with about 150 other evacuees. There, she qualified for rent assistance under the federally funded Georgia Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance Program. She also visited three prospective places.
The former advertising worker looks forward to moving into a new place. "It's hard living in a hotel room with four teenagers with a microwave and a refrigerator," Ramsey said.
But even after attending the housing seminar, Victoria Johnson was hardly optimistic about finding a new place by the Dec. 1 deadline. She said she'd had trouble dealing with FEMA.
"We called FEMA today and they hung up," she said. "We had to call back." Now she's calling about emergency housing in Louisiana, where evacuees in hotels may have more time to find homes.
Staff writer Sonji Jacobs contributed to this article.
