On July 7 the U.S. Census Bureau released data showing population changes that the Houston Chronicle called “possibly the largest, fastest forced migration of U.S. residents in the nation’s history.”

The data shows that Harris County, which contains most of the city of Houston, grew by about 92,000 residents after the storm. But local officials suggest as many as 150,000 evacuees might reside here, about 90,000 of them in the housing funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

According to the governor’s office, some 220,000 evacuees, largely from Louisiana, are still in Texas. The Christian Science Monitor reports that a Gallup survey, due out in early September, will also show that 59 percent of the evacuees still in this state don’t have jobs and 41 percent live in households with incomes of less than $500 a month.

Many people were transported to shelters here a year ago after nearly a week in the suffocating heat and degradation of the New Orleans Superdome. Once in town they were given a chilling welcome by the city’s mayor, who warned them that jail cells would be ready for all those who stepped out of line. Since then, Houston officials have consistently pointed to the former New Orleans residents as a leading cause of crime in the area.

The Associated Press reported that some 7,000 families in Texas who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina risk becoming homeless in September. For the past year, these families have been receiving rental assistance from FEMA. However, the agency’s program that provides such aid ends August 31. Evacuees could lose the housing subsidy unless they qualify under a new program.

Houston TV station KTRK reported on August 25 that thousands of Katrina evacuees are without power because nobody told them they needed to begin paying their electricity bills directly to the utilities. Under a FEMA relief program, the government agreed to pay those bills for one year. The city of Houston claims it sent letters notifying evacuees that they needed to switch the bills to their own names. But many say they had no warning. “I just found this out when I picked my daughter up from school, came inside, and the lights were out,” Shewanda Wilson told KTRK news. About 1,800 customers lost power last week in the first wave of cutoffs.

Federal Medicaid waivers were also ended by June 30, so many evacuees are now without medical insurance.  
 
 
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