BATON ROUGE – FEMA-funded hotel rooms for people who flooded in August ended Wednesday, with anyone left on the program requiring to check out of their rooms or begin paying the costs of housing themselves.

FEMA has paid for rooms at area hotels, and in some cases, out-of-town, for people who lost their homes in the flood. FEMA said it extended it's program nine times, allowing people to stay in rooms for the last nine months. Typically, the federal government said, the standard is six months for emergency shelter assistance.

In the immediate aftermath of the flood event last year, area hotels filled to capacity as people looked for safe, dry places to stay. Thousands were in city hotel rooms as they worked to repair their homes or looked for other places to stay.

FEMA did not release the number of people who were still staying in hotel rooms as of this week.

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