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Red Cross Paying Hotel Bills for Thousands
Horrace Hoges was fortunate to get a hotel room before Hurricane Katrina made landfall.
(By Denis Paquin -- Associated Press)
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In contrast to this week's confusing and sometimes chaotic effort by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to issue $2,000 debit cards to evacuees, the Red Cross hotel program seems to be working smoothly, with virtually no paperwork for evacuees and a simplified billing process for hotel managers.
"I have never seen anything with the government that is this simple," Thackston said.
Guests who have documents showing they are residents of the affected Zip codes merely have to request that the hotel send their unpaid room bills to the Red Cross. They fill out no paperwork. The hotel then sends a request for payment to a company that has been hired by the Red Cross to manage the program.
At the Jackson Marriott, the largest hotel in Jackson, general manager Tom Schweitzer said that only six of the guests in his 303-room hotel have so far asked for help.
At the Holiday Inn Select in Baton Rouge, La., a city that has doubled in size with evacuees, a manager said that many guests already have their hotel costs covered by insurance and have not applied for Red Cross help. "We are finding that if people have insurance or their own resources, they are not using the Red Cross," said the manager, who declined to be identified by name.
For evacuees who have been struggling in the past week to get any kind of help from the federal government, the relative ease of getting the Red Cross to pay for hotel room charges is striking.
"I called the Red Cross and told them I may not be able to vacate my room before the 14 days run out, and they told me it would probably be extended," said Julie Burkhamer, 42, whose home in Mandeville, La., on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, was damaged in the storm.
She and her husband and their two cats and a dog are staying in a $100-a-night room at the La Quinta hotel in Lafayette. Their two weeks will run out on Monday.
"Now, FEMA, that's a different story," Burkhamer said. "They haven't done jack squat. I contacted them by phone, and they said they would be back to me in two weeks. There is no one around here to see from FEMA. To get the Red Cross hotel coverage, I didn't have to do anything."
