Metro

Evacuee stats don’t abode well

About 40,000 city residents remain displaced because of Hurricane Sandy — and officials yesterday acknowledged they have no idea what they’re going to do with thousands of them in the long term.

“This is going to be a massive, massive housing problem,” Gov. Cuomo said. “You are going to need a number of options for a number of situations, short-term and long-term. We’ll get through it, but it’s a true challenge.”

Mayor Bloomberg added, “We don’t have a lot of empty housing in this city.

“We’re not going to let anybody go sleeping in the streets . . . but it’s a challenge, and we’re working on it,” he said.

“We’re working to take care of the immediate needs of the food, water, warmth and safety, and we’ve also started to address the process of long-term recovery.

“I don’t know that anybody has ever taken this number of people and found housing for them overnight.”

Some city officials speculated that FEMA trailers — the kind used to house victims of Hurricane Katrina — would be brought in.

Nearly 5,000 people remained in temporary shelters last night, and more were expected as temperatures tonight and tomorrow dip near freezing.

The mayor’s office said about half of the 40,000 displaced New Yorkers would likely be able to return to their homes within a couple of weeks.

The other half — many living in public-housing buildings — would need to wait for longer-term assistance.

So far, the city has set up 15 hurricane shelters in the five boroughs and six distribution centers to hand out supplies including blankets, flashlights and baby supplies.

But as many as 45,000 people were living in public housing in the city’s “Zone A,” where the flooding was most severe, and 17 of those projects — involving 106 buildings — still had no electrical power as of yesterday.

As many as 730,000 remained without power statewide — 145,000 in the city.

FEMA administrator Craig Fugate said 86,000 households have already registered for FEMA assistance.