FEMA has put up many of the victims of hurricane Sandy in hotels and motels. Long-term solutions for those left homeless by the storm have not been resolved.
Gregory Usher sits outside an American Red Cross Shelter at Nassau Community College on Monday, in Garden City, N.Y. Usher has been living for three days at the shelter after Hurricane Sandy flooded his home in Long Beach, N.Y.
Kathy Kmonicek/AP
EnlargeGovernment leaders are turning their attention to the next crisis unfolding in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy: finding housing for potentially tens of thousands of people left homeless.
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it has already dispensed close to $200 million in emergency housing assistance and has put 34,000 people in the New York and New Jersey metropolitan area up in hotels and motels.
But local, state and federal officials have yet to lay out a specific, comprehensive plan for finding them long-term places to live, even as cold weather sets in. And given the scarcity and high cost of housing in the metropolitan area and the lack of open space, it could prove a monumental undertaking.
For example, can enough vacant apartments be found? Will the task involve huge, Hurricane Katrina-style encampments of trailer homes? And if so, where will authorities put the trailers? In stadiums? Parks?
Authorities cannot answers those questions yet.
"It's not going to be a simple task. It's going to be one of the most complicated and long-term recovery efforts in U.S. history," said Mark Merritt, president of Witt Associates, a Washington crisis management consulting firm founded by former FEMA director James Lee Witt.
Tactics that FEMA used in other disasters could be difficult to apply in the city. For example, Merritt said, it's impossible to set up trailers in people's driveways if everyone lives in an apartment building, and it's harder to find space to set up mobile homes.
Sandy killed more 100 people in 10 states but vented the worst of its fury on New Jersey and New York. A week after the storm slammed the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, 1.4 million homes and businesses remained in the dark.
Another storm ? a nor'easter packing heavy rain and gusts of 50 to 60 mph ? was headed for the metropolitan area Wednesday, threatening more flooding and power outages that could undo some of the repairs made in the past few days.
With the temperatures dropping into the 30s overnight, people in dark, unheated homes were urged to go to overnight shelters or daytime warming centers.
Because so many voters have been displaced by the storm, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order allowing people to vote in Tuesday's statewide and presidential elections at any polling place in the state. New Jersey had already taken similar measures.
"Just because you are displaced doesn't mean you are disenfranchised," Cuomo said. "Compared to what we have had to deal with in the past week, this will be a walk in the park when it comes to voting."
As for long-term housing for the homeless, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday that the government is looking into using everything from hotels and motels to FEMA trailers and prefab homes.
"Given the extent of need, no option is off the table," she said. "All of them will have some place in this puzzle."
Napolitano said the government's first priority is getting people to a warm place where they can eat a hot meal. Beyond that, the government wants to find housing as close to people's homes as possible.
"Whether we'll be able to accomplish that, I couldn't say," she said. "We're just now getting a handle on housing."
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