Houston ? Federal and state officials tried to ease fears Thursday that thousands of Louisiana hurricane evacuees in Texas would be left homeless again after Dec. 1 when FEMA has said it will stop paying their hotel and motel bills.

“We are finding longer-term housing for all evacuees,” said Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. “That’s really a top priority, working with families to help them find some long-term housing options.

“Our top priority is meeting the needs of evacuees, making sure they receive the benefits and assistance for which they’re eligible. FEMA assistance is going to continue after Dec. 1 for evacuees,” Knocke added.

Houston Mayor Bill White, in an angry letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, said the deadline was unreasonable given the huge numbers of evacuees still in hotels. He also said that the requirement that evacuees be moved to apartments with three-month leases – a rare find – was never part of the city’s negotiations with the federal government.

White spokesman Pat Trahan said the mayor talked Thursday with Michael Jackson, a Homeland Security deputy secretary, who appeared to be receptive to White’s requests for time extensions.

Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the principal federal official for Gulf Coast hurricane relief, and David Garratt, acting director of FEMA’s Recovery Division, said in Washington on Thursday the plans announced this week were merely restatements of policies announced in October.

A view of an area not far from the levee breach in the lower Ninth Ward is seen Thursday in New Orleans. Officials are trying to reassure Katrina evacuees that they will not be homeless after FEMA stops paying hotel and motel bills.

Texas’ emergency management coordinator on Thursday told the state Senate Finance Committee that the state won’t allow hurricane evacuees to be put out of their hotels by the Dec. 1 deadline. He added, though, that he wasn’t sure how to prevent it.

White said that in discussions in September, when thousands of evacuees began arriving in Houston primarily from devastated Louisiana, FEMA encouraged extensions of apartment leases from six months to a year, broadening the availability of apartments.

“Never, ever was some immediate suspension of the apartment program before Dec. 1 discussed in numerous conversations with me or others in Houston,” the mayor said in his letter.

According to figures from the mayor’s office, the city has moved about 41,000 people from hotels into apartments in the past 70 days.

“Today the apartment market is even tighter than in September,” White wrote. “It is not realistic to assume the remaining hotel population can be moved to apartments in the next 15 days.”