Displacement after Hurricane Katrina

People from the Gulf States region in the southern United States, most notably New Orleans, Louisiana, were forced to leave their homes because of the devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and were unable to return because of a multitude of factors, and are collectively known as the Gulf Coast diaspora and by standard definition considered internally displaced persons.

With the opportunity to enact proposals that had circulated since the mid-1980s, the city council voted unanimously to demolish 4,500 units of traditional public housing.

While liberals touted it as "deconcentration," the removal project effectively (and efficiently) displaced low-income residents from areas ripe for profit-making.

[7] Texas avoided any direct damage from Hurricane Katrina, but the state took in an estimated 220,000 people who sought refuge from Louisiana.

By the afternoon of September 5, with a total estimated number of over 230,000 evacuees in Texas, Governor Perry ordered that buses begin being diverted to other shelters outside the state resulting in 20,000 being sent to Oklahoma and 30,000 being sent to Arkansas.

The Reliant Astrodome in Houston took on some of the 25,000 who had initially sought shelter in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, but quickly reached capacity and by September 2, was unable to accept additional hurricane evacuees from the disaster.

The Astrodome was reopened a few hours later, after it was announced that all events scheduled through December 2005 would be cancelled so as to open the building to an additional 11,000 evacuees.

The New Orleans Saints NFL football team, who were displaced from their home facility at the Superdome, moved temporarily to San Antonio.

The Saints' 2005 home games were split between the Alamodome in San Antonio and Louisiana State University's Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.

[11] In 2008, the Institute for Southern Studies, a nonpartisan research center, published a report on "Hurricane Katrina and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement".

The report found that the U.S. government neglected to adhere to "internationally recognized human rights principles the Bush administration has promoted in other countries.

[15] In May 2009, FEMA announced an end to its temporary housing program that it started in the aftermath of Katrina, but presented with the more than 3,400 people still living in FEMA trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi who faced eviction, offered hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast still living in government-supplied trailers to buy their temporary homes for as little as $1.

Data Center Research commented in 2018: Thirteen years after Katrina, there are 21 neighborhoods in the city that now have a larger number of active addresses than they did prior to the levee breaches.