Puerto Rican Evacuees Face Eviction from FEMA Hotels

By ALAIN GAILLARD

Dozens of activists and Puerto Rican evacuees appealed to FEMA on Thursday, to stop the imminent eviction of 86 families made homeless by hurricane Maria and living in hotels throughout the five boroughs.

“What it is happening here, what it is happening in Puerto Rico is a destruction of the Puerto Rican people,” said Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, one of the rally’s organizers t a news conference on the steps of City Hall. “It is genocide; it is displacement; it is homelessness; it is a crime against human rights.”

The island’s total recovery since the storm was still a long way off, as evidenced by the island experiencing yesterday a total power outage that affected more than 3 million people, the biggest power outage since Maria hit the island last year.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo also on Thursday at a separate news conference urged President Trump to extend the program to June.

Peter B. Gudaitis, executive director of the New York Disaster Interfaith Services, an organization providing help for Hurricane Maria evacuees, said that he had received  a message from the city that the 86 families facing eviction by tomorrow could stay at their hotel. He expressed concern that all families living in hotels will be evicted by May 14, the date the program is supposed to end.

“The TSA program is ending; within a few weeks there won’t be  any TSA program left,” he said. “The families in New York are in very precarious situation because if they don’t have a hotel room, the only option is to move to shelters or get on a plane back to Puerto Rico or to live on the street, not a choice any survivor of disasters in the U.S. should have to make.”

Nearly 4,000 families living in 40 states and Puerto Rico were in hotels under FEMA’s transitional sheltering assistance program. Last year, after two major hurricanes hit the island, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio gave housing to thousands of Puerto Rican evacuees. TSA allows eligible families and individuals to live temporarily in participating hotels at no cost .The CUNY Center for Puerto Rico Study estimates that 1100 Puerto Ricans have settled in New York six months since the hurricane devstated the island.

Andrea Tajeda, who has been in New York with her 4-year-old daughter since December 14, was first in a shelter before moving to a hotel. Very worried, she said that when they were moving from the shelter to the hotel, her daughter tried to console her by saying “Mama, do not cry, I will help.” Tajeda hopes the City will come up with a solution that would allow her to stay in New York now that she has lost her home in Puerto Rico.