Nearly 300 Hurricane Sandy victims get hotel stays extended

Many of the almost 300 New Yorkers displaced by Hurricane Sandy and still living in hotel rooms got a reprieve on Friday, when the Red Cross said it would put up $1 million to keep most of them in their hotel rooms.

The City of New York had planned to evict the group on Friday, after funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency ran out.

City officials said they could no longer afford the rooms, which cost an average of $266 per night.

But as nonprofit social service organizations scrambled to find alternative housing arrangements, the Red Cross said it would commit $1 million to extend the hotel stays of many of those families.

Not everyone will qualify for help, and it was not immediately clear how many of the 294 people who were in the city's hotel rooms Thursday night would get assistance quickly enough to get back in the rooms Friday evening.

Greater New York Red Cross Chief Executive Officer Josh Lockwood said the emergency aid is being directed toward people who had a more permanent "housing solution" somewhere on the horizon. That might include people whose homes are being repaired and just need additional time for the work to be completed, he said, or people who had lined up apartments but could not move in immediately.

Other residents, including some who had been homeless or on the edge of homelessness before the storm, would probably not qualify to have their hotel stays extended, because they had no viable plans for paying for their own place anytime soon.

Those people will most likely be referred to other services, including the city's shelter system, Lockwood said.

More than 3,000 people were in the city's hotel rooms over the life of the program. The city spent about $70 million on the rooms before ending the program, according to The Associated Press.

Al Jazeera and wire services