Homestore’s Welcome Wagon today launched a Web site where individuals and families in need of temporary or permanent housing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina can go to search for available housing in shelters, churches, apartment complexes, single-family homes and senior facilities throughout the Gulf Coast and neighboring communities.
The site can be accessed at http://relief.welcomewagon.com.
Site users, including survivors of Hurricane Katrina and their friends and family, as well as relief agencies and other volunteers, can search a comprehensive database of available homes and sort by city/state, number of people and length of stay. When a search is initiated, multiple sites that have been created to find housing for people left homeless by Hurricane Katrina, as well as Realtor.com, are simultaneously evaluated for matching search results, enabling the user to effectively and efficiently identify a possible housing solution.
Thousands of families have reached out and offered up space in their homes to hurricane evacuees. But many have said connecting volunteers with those in need has been a challenge.
There are currently more than 41,000 listings on the Welcome Wagon site, and additional sites will be added on an ongoing basis. This alleviates the need to individually visit each site to query the same search.
Individuals also can post information about open beds, extra rooms, guesthouses and other temporary housing that they may have available.
Please e-mail relief@welcomewagon.com if you would like to add your Web site to this free resource.
In addition, the National Association of Realtors has also established the Realtors Relief Foundation at www.realtor.org/relief to provide housing-related assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Welcome Wagon is operated by Homestore, a real estate media company. Homestore also operates Realtor.com.
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