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During the weekend, Yanitza Cruz and her family moved. Again. Twice, in fact, for the third and fourth time since the passage of Hurricane Maria in a rural village of Puerto Rico last September.
Their new address is, like the last two, a Queens hotel rented by New York City's homelessness department as a family refuge. This is a lifeline that the city has offered to Puerto Rican evacuees of Hurricane Maria last week just when housing aid the Federal Emergency Management Agency. was about to run out. But it's also another stop on a journey that seemed endless.
"I got rid of a lot of things and I stored it," said Mrs. Cruz, 28, taping boxes on Saturday morning. The room filled with shopping bags and luggage at his FEMA hotel near La Guardia Airport, working around his 5-year-old daughter and her young son. "But I still have the impression of having too many things to take away here."
FEMA spent more than $ 84 million on a temporary shelter program for Puerto Rican evacuees of Hurricanes Maria and Irma, and on Saturday, after several extensions, this assistance was to be missed. Before the deadline, New York City announced last week that it would instead take evacuees, placing 108 households in hotels.
FEMA housing assistance was extended by a few days when federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Saturday blocking the expiration, and FEMA said the program will continue until Thursday. A hearing in the case, filed on the grounds that the end of the federal program would put evacuees "at risk of homelessness and other irreparable injuries," is scheduled for Monday.
Jaclyn Rothenberg, spokeswoman for the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, said that in front of the order, the city "was taking no chances" and would continue to offer the # 39; s help. The city reported spending an average of $ 222 a day to house a family in a hotel, including the cost of social services such as career counseling and mental health
" Trump administration has abandoned Puerto Rico, "said Ms. Rothenberg. "Our mayor will not do it, we will shelter our fellow Americans and we will do everything we can to help them get back on their feet."
In any case, at the time the judge's order came, the Cruzes had already left the SpringHill Suites by Marriott, an elegant white box near the airport where FEMA had installed them in the last six months, alongside weddings, business travelers, fans of extra-urban sports and tourists
She held a cradle for her three-month-old son, Nathan, she counted her blessings. His five year old daughter, Janesty, would not have to change school. Nathan, who has a digestive problem, receives first-rate medical care here. And her husband, Joel García, has completed his training to obtain a barber's license and is now working in a hair salon in Jamaica, Queens.
"We have been good," she said. "The only thing we need, in fact, is just housing."
Cruz and Mr. García are determined to rebuild their lives here in New York, rather than returning to Puerto Rico, especially since Nathan was born in the spring at the Bellevue Hospital Center. "He is a New Yorker, so I have to give him a chance to know his city," said Mrs. Cruz
. Cruz said goodbye to hotel staff at SpringHill Suites, exchanging a hug with tears. A driver loaded the family's belongings from a trio of bellboy carts into a van provided by the city to take the evacuees to their next address. Janesty cried when Mr. García fastened his seatbelt
The van dropped them off at the Brewer Hotel near the John F. Kennedy International Airport. But they came to the conclusion that the promised two-bedroom unit was temporarily unavailable, and the family of four received a bedroom instead.
They opposed the arrangement, even get the piece, it is difficult to change it in another room, because it is a big process, "said Mr. García. negotiated with the city, the Cruzes were sent to an AHI group hotel, a simple brick building in Jamaica, where they said that they arrived around midnight and fell to bed.
While & ## 39, they were relieved to have a place to go, Cruz said that there would be some disadvantages to the new provision.The city places most evacuees Puerto Ricans in hotels, not in refuges for without – but the rules of the shelter system still apply Residents must log in and out when they leave and there is an hour of 9 pm curfew.
Cruz said that they did not know when they would have to move again, or when they could find a She tries to maintain a positive attitude.
"He was appointed after appointment after appointment," she said Sunday. "Emotionally, it weighed on us"
"But at the same time it is also an adventure, we know the system and we met a lot of good people."
Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Patricia Mazzei contributed to the report.
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