When Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana Gulf Coast in 2005, it funneled more than 200,000 evacuees into Houston at once. The city mobilized, setting up emergency shelters and providing other kinds of immediate relief. But in the months and years that followed, the tens of thousands of evacuees who decided to stay in Houston struggled to rebuild their lives. Many had difficulty securing permanent affordable housing and establishing financial stability. The health sector also struggled to keep up with increased demand for services.
These kinds of longer-term needs from mass migration are likely to be a pain point in the coming decades. With climate change expected to displace tens of millions of people across the US, the cities that will absorb these migrants need to ramp up their capacity to provide assistance beyond the initial emergency period, according to a package of new reports from the Urban Institute in partnership with several universities and other organizations. Cities also need to mobilize to absorb migrants that trickle into a city over a protracted period of time, as in Southern Louisiana, where coastal residents have gradually moved inland to escape creeping floods and worsening storms.
