GALVESTON — Latina Vallery planned to stay in her Super 8 motel room until next week, when her landlord should be finished making repairs to her flood-damaged apartment.

But Tuesday morning, she found a note taped to her door saying she had to be out by 11 a.m. today.

Vallery is among hundreds of Galveston County residents checking out of hotel and motel rooms today because the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not extend their hotel vouchers.

With rental property still in short supply and many displaced residents left with nowhere else to go, local social service agencies fear many people will end up sleeping on the street tonight.

“I honestly don’t know where I will go (today),” said Vallery, who has been living in the hotel for about a month.

The federal government started paying for hotel stays as soon as Hurricane Ike came ashore Sept. 13, causing major flooding in Galveston and leaving a trail of destruction along the upper Texas Coast. But at every extension deadline, more and more displaced residents learn they don’t qualify for continued assistance.

At the end of October, the federal government extended the hotel voucher program through January, but only people who still qualify for assistance can stay.

Although FEMA officials could not say how many people no longer qualified for assistance, hotel owner Jana Wyatt estimated it would be several hundred.

About 47 guests at the Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort did not get extensions, said Wyatt, one of the hotel’s owners.

Many people will now be experiencing homelessness for the first time, said Ted Hanley, executive director of The Jesse Tree.

Hanley’s staff members spend most of their time now taking calls from people who don’t know where to go for help, once FEMA has turned them down.

“People are just panic-stricken,” he said. “They’ve never had to search for this kind of assistance before.”

Unfortunately, the kind of help most people need is no longer available on the island, Hanley said.

Most of the island’s social service organizations suffered severe damage during the storm. Few organizations have the resources or the facilities to offer daily needs’ assistance or overnight shelter, he said.

The temporary shelter funded by the state and operated by Baptist Child and Family Services closed Saturday, after all its residents found new places to stay, said Allison Castle, a spokeswoman with Gov. Rick Perry’s office.

Of the 268 people originally staying in the shelter, caseworkers helped about 174 find other housing. About 40 went to stay with family and friends. The rest left the shelter after making their own arrangements, Castle said.

The Galveston Island Family Crisis Center is one of the only places homeless families can find refuge.

The shelter had 20 vacant beds Tuesday morning, but by that afternoon, only six remained.

One woman who was living at Wyatt’s hotel with 13 children called the shelter desperate for help after finding out her voucher would not be extended, said Eliza Quigly, vice president for community relations for The Children’s Center, which operates the crisis center.

Unlike some, Vallery does have a place to stay. She even has money for rental assistance, but she doesn’t want to spend it on a hotel room now and come up short when her rent is due.

“They’re telling us to take that check and pay for the hotel room,” she said “But they’re hitting us too hard. Ike done already hit us.”