Hurricane Katrina: Guess Who's Coming ...

Forrest King, a rotund man who does not surrender very easily, was told by the American Red Cross and FEMA that they would not help him find Hurricane Katrina victims who needed a place to stay. If he wanted to help, he should give cash, he was told. Otherwise, who knows whom he might let into his home? They might be murderers. They might smoke. In any case, there would be great strain on everyone.

But King's house in Attleboro, Mass., southwest of Boston, had rooms to spare. And after days spent watching wrenching hurricane coverage on Fox News, he and his family decided that bureaucrats might not be the best judges of the situation. "The government failed," says King. "The citizens have to stand up and say, 'Get out of the way. We'll take care of our own.'" And so, for the past week, King, a self-described "dyed-in-the-wool conservative," has been sharing his home with the Meehan-Hoo family, a lesbian couple with three children, ages 5, 7 and 9. "The adults are same sex, and I don't care," he says. "I don't care if they're purple and got horns coming out of their faces. They're Americans first."

Hurricane Katrina has forced some 1 million people to leave their homes. Their 14-day Red Cross hotel vouchers are starting to expire, and their bank accounts are dwindling. Still, relief workers insist that the displaced masses need stable housing of their own, where they can exert some control over their destinies; they don't need to share a bathroom with your children. "Bringing people into your home doesn't give them a sense of independence or dignity," says Daniel Webster, an Episcopal reverend who has been working with the Red Cross relief operation in Utah.

Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of Americans are circumventing the large organizations, ignoring expert advice and offering up their own private refuge. On the basis of conservative estimates from websites that have been making matches, more than 20,000 evacuees are staying in the homes of strangers. In some cases, the results have been predictably disastrous. A Minnesota woman unwittingly took in a woman who turned out to be wanted in Florida on suspicion of organized fraud, grand theft and probation violation, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

In other cases, though, the collision of strangers and good intentions proves once again that the bureaucracy lacks imagination. After King struck out with the relief organizations, he began looking online. He found openyourhome.com started by Serena Howard, a mother of five in Fayetteville, Ark. (So far, Howard says, she has registered almost 30,000 would-be hosts and placed 2,000 evacuees.) That's where King found the Meehan-Hoo family.

Yolanda and Jan Meehan-Hoo evacuated Slidell, La., with their children and Yolanda's mother, who has Alzheimer's and diabetes, one day before the hurricane hit. They drove away from the storm for more than 28 hours, averaging 10 m.p.h. most of the way. The brakes of their gray Suzuki Esteem hatchback eventually gave out, so they rode the emergency brake. "I said, 'C'mon, baby, you gotta get us out of here,'" says Yolanda. "She names her cars. This one was Betsy," explains Jan, laughing and holding Yolanda's hand in the Attleboro kitchen.