NYT: Many Displaced By Hurricane Don't Intend to Return

[liberalpragmatist]

Putting Down New Roots on More Solid Ground

By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: September 7, 2005

HOUSTON, Sept. 6 - In her 19 years, all spent living in downtown New Orleans, Chavon Allen had never ventured farther than her bus fare would allow, and that was one trip last year to Baton Rouge. But now that she has seen Houston, she is planning to stay.

<snip>

From across the economic spectrum, whether with heavy hearts or with optimism, the hundreds of thousands of people who fled the wrath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans are already putting down roots in new cities. If even a fraction of them decide not to return, the migration threatens a population crash that could be nearly as devastating to the New Orleans area as the storm itself.

And city officials know it. After days of asking, then demanding, now practically begging the residents of New Orleans to leave, they have mentally if not publicly changed gears and are devising strategy behind the scenes about how they will accomplish a titanic shift - in effect, a reverse evacuation.

Since its population peaked at almost 630,000 in 1960, New Orleans has been steadily losing its people. According to the last census, 445,000 people lived there. But a trickle of people over the decades is quite a different matter from what the city now faces, a sudden population bust that could subtract up to 250,000 people.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/national/nationalspecial/07home.html?hp&ex=1126065600&en=9f0fd647f8dd7622&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Teaser]

1. Rebuilding NO..

was always a bad idea. But it's the best bad idea out there, and there are not good ones.

It must not be depopulated. It's too important a city for that.