The federal government gave tens of thousands of hurricane evacuees until December 1 to find apartments.

"If the current FEMA deadlines are enforced, this newly announced policy will lead to a complex -- perhaps intractable -- housing crisis," Perry said late Friday in a letter to FEMA Director David Paulison.

"The fast-approaching deadline will fuel the cycle of evacuees moving from one temporary housing situation to another -- if they can secure housing at all," he said.

Perry wants the deadline for evacuating hotels extended by at least three months. Calls placed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington were not immediately returned.

With the US Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays approaching, mayors, members of Congress and Perry asked FEMA to abandon the December 1 deadline for moving evacuees out of hotels and into apartments.

They warned that many could end up returning to emergency shelters or on the street if the federal government quits paying for their hotels.

Victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita still occupy around 50,000 hotels rooms across the United States, according to recent figures published by FEMA. In Texas alone, an estimated 50,000 people live in about 18,000 hotel rooms, the agency told reporters this week.

Now the government, keen to save money, wants the evacuees out of the hotel rooms, which cost on average 2,100 dollars per month. By comparison, the average apartment costs about 800 dollars per month, officials said.

"We will stop paying for hotel rooms the night of November 30," FEMA spokesman Don Jacks said in Texas. "On the morning of December 1, these evacuees need to be ready to move out of these hotels and motels."

FEMA also announced it would not reimburse cities, which have been arranging apartment leases, for more than three months' rent. That prompted a blistering letter from Bill White, the mayor of Houston, which has taken in as many as 200,000 storm evacuees. White said FEMA broke its word to pay up to a years' rent.

"Great nations, like good people, keep their word," White wrote.

In some cities and towns, plans to set up emergency shelters are already being made in the event that the stop payment order prompts an evacuation of the evacuees.

"We have that contingency in place," said Juan Ortiz, emergency management coordinator for the city of Fort Worth. "Thats a last resort. We dont want to get to that point."

City officials there are joining the chorus of state and local politicians begging the federal bureaucracy not to toss out hurricane survivors right before the holidays.

"Several cities are dealing with such large numbers of evacuees that it may not be feasible for them to comply with the current deadline," said US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, in a letter to FEMA.

"As the holiday season approaches we do not want to see those who have already lost so much be left homeless or returned to shelters."

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