122,000 lost after Katrina

August 28, 2005, just two weeks from The Louisiana Weekly’s 80th anniversary, a looming hurricane just seemed like another false alarm. Dutifully, hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians – those who possessed the economic means to do so – packed their children, loved ones and pets into cars for the 12-hour crawling, contra-flowing commute to Baton Rouge.

Thousands more stayed home. Some were flat broke from two previous evacuations over the previous two years, where those who remained behind only experienced clear skies and a day off from work. Others saw a Category 1 hurricane, which had turned towards the Gulf Coast. “No threat,” they thought.

The desperate images over the next week emblazoned themselves upon the memories of the nation. Katrina’s botched aftermath became one of those singular turning points in American history. Our people were displaced. The press would call us refugees, until we demanded the dignity of being Americans, and therefore we became known as “evacuees.”

We became a culture scattered to the winds. The comedian Becky Allen later quipped, “Next time we all have to agree to evacuate to the same place.”

Robbed of their jobs, culture and sense of place for the better part of a year, many never returned. In April 2000, 484,674 people lived in Orleans Parish. Just an estimated 230,172 residents remained by April 2006, according to the New Orleans Data Center, a loss of more than 250,000 people. By 2024, the population had only rebounded to 362,701.

Elizabeth Fussell, who was an assistant professor at Tulane University from 2001 to 2007, found that 33 percent of people who had been living in New Orleans when Katrina hit had not returned to the metro area by 2006. Of those people who had not returned, 21.7 percent lived in Baton Rouge, 14.6 percent in Atlanta, 11.7 percent in Houston and 5.8 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth. The remainder scattered across the United States.

By 2019, Fussell’s research shows, 30.9 percent of Katrina-affected New Orleanians still lived elsewhere, though by then, Texas cities had succeeded in keeping (and even attracting) more of them. Atlanta’s 14.6 percent share of displaced New Orleanians in 2006 dropped to 7.7 percent by 2019. In contrast, during that same timeframe, Houston’s share grew from 21 to 38 percent.

Race proved the major distinguishing factor for those who did return to the Crescent City.

“Everybody was displaced from New Orleans,” Fussell told Axios, but her earlier research shows “that non-Black residents … came back earlier to New Orleans than Black residents… Neighborhoods that had larger percentages of Black residents were more likely to have suffered greater damage and have higher flood deaths, but [it’s also because of] access to rebuilding resources.”

The proportion of African-American residents of Orleans Parish, while still a majority, has decreased from around 67 percent in 2000 to 56 percent in 2024. In 2005, denied the opportunity to even enter their neighborhoods (in many areas) for up to four months, much less begin rebuilding their homes, many gave up and never returned to the lifestyles and livelihoods which defined this city.

This article originally published in the August 25, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.