ORLANDO, Fla. _ A federal judge has not decided whether about 1,700 families displaced from Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria will be able to stay in hotel rooms with Federal Emergency Management Agency vouchers past Thursday.
The Transitional Sheltering Assistance program was scheduled to end Saturday, which would have meant those families _ including hundreds in Florida _ would have had to move out of the hotels where they've been living since the storm devastated the island in September.
In response to a lawsuit, a federal judge in Massachusetts issued a last-minute ruling Saturday ordering FEMA to extend the program until Thursday.
"The irreparable harm to the plaintiffs is obvious and overwhelming ... they will be evicted and homeless since by definition each plaintiffs home was rendered uninhabitable by the hurricane in Puerto Rico," U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin wrote in his decision Saturday.
Attorneys for displaced Puerto Ricans on Monday asked another federal judge to extend the program by another month or so, which would allow the evacuees to stay at the hotels.
During a hearing Monday via conference call, U.S. District Judge Timothy S. Hillman asked attorney Hector Pineiro, who is representing the affected families, why they waited until Saturday afternoon to file the lawsuit. Pineiro said a ruling could be expected before Thursday.
"Everybody was working around the clock to get this complaint done, and that as changes and modifications were made, they did not come until late afternoon on Saturday," said Pineiro, who added that the delay also had to do with "numerous requests to the use of the political process" to extend the TSA program.
The federal government argued that FEMA had given ample notice of the June 30 deadline to hotels and displaced families. Assistant U.S. Attorney Rayford A. Farquhar said the TSA program was designed to relieve pressure from overcrowded hurricane shelters.
He added that the government of Puerto Rico did not request another extension of the program beyond Saturday.
According to the evidence, Farquhar said the organizations suing the agency wouldn't be able to prove that families "are entitled to a constitutional right of housing provided by FEMA."
