Miami Mayor Manny Diaz defended the city's response to Hurricane Wilma, even as city officials struggled Wednesday to find temporary shelter for hundreds evicted from their rain-battered homes.

Diaz, delivering a generator and hot meals to seniors at the Armando Badía Senior Center in Flagami, downplayed the exodus from damaged homes and said city workers were working with the county to secure housing for those displaced. But critics said the situation underscores Miami's stock of substandard housing.

He shrugged off suggestions that city officials were overwhelmed by the initial response to collapsing roofs but acknowledged that some of those evacuated were first sent to a hotel without power.

Running a well-financed reelection campaign with no high-profile opposition, Diaz has been in front of the cameras since Wilma struck Miami, organizing an ice, water and food delivery drive at the Orange Bowl -- a neighborhood that likely has one of the highest voting turnouts in the city. The effort earned him kudos from Gov. Jeb Bush.

Diaz rejected suggestions that the televised scenes of poor renters being forced out of their crumbling homes could play a role in the city election, which was postponed by Hurricane Wilma, but is now scheduled for Nov. 15.

Sushma Sheth, director of policy and communications at the Miami Workers Center, gave the city's response a mixed review. ''They need to be moved into other housing, not just removed and kicked to the curb,'' she said.

But the center and other organizations plan a press conference today to highlight what they see as a more pressing problem: preventing condemned buildings from becoming ripe prospects for glitzy condo developments.

''What concerns my organization is that long-standing poor conditions that are known and revealed by a disaster don't become a reason for wholesale gentrification and removal of those communities,'' she said.

This is cache, read story here