Hurricane Katrina Leaves Impact on Houston

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities, but the storm likely will have long-term effects for Houston as well, said panelists who spoke at the discussion “Hurricane Katrina and Houston: Implications for Our Future.” Ironically, the event was held as Hurricane Rita was thought to be heading to Galveston.

Sociology professor Stephen Klineberg (left), and Bob Stein (right), dean of Rice’s School of Social Sciences.

The hurricanes will force the city to reconsider its own emergency-response and evacuation plans. Further, there could be long-lasting political, economic, and demographic ramifications for the city, which has become home for thousands of Katrina evacuees. The storm also may have altered the city’s reputation and the ways in which Houstonians deal with their own issues.

“The politics of this are straightforward,” said Bob Stein, dean of Rice’s School of Social Sciences. “Voters very quickly do what political scientists call attribution. That is, they ask, who is responsible for this?”

The big winner in the hurricane aftermath was Houston mayor Bill White, Stein said. Houston and Harris County residents polled after evacuees arrived here said they felt White did the best job of handling the crisis. This is in stark contrast to the response following Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 to then-mayor Lee Brown. He was perceived as a bad manager, and in an election just a few months later, he lost many votes.

The positive response to White’s leadership was reflected in the November 8 election, where he won an unprecedented 91 percent of the vote, and, Stein said, his political career beyond serving as Houston’s mayor may be bolstered. Texas Governor Rick Perry and President George W. Bush, however, were not perceived as favorably. The perception of Bush, and the federal government in general, could lead to a debate about the national response to natural disasters.

The hurricane also could have an effect on how politicians in Houston and elsewhere deal with the long-neglected issue of poverty, noted sociology professor Stephen Klineberg. “Katrina brought alive in all of us a new awareness of the grinding realities of third-world poverty in our midst.”

During the last 20 years, Klineberg said, there has been a shift of resources out of the hands of the poor and middle class and into the hands of the rich as equalizing policies—like progressive income tax, a minimum wage that keeps up with inflation, and the earned income tax credit—have eroded. The hurricane’s aftermath could bring about a reversal of that trend and bring some relief for those living in poverty. But Klineberg warned that, in Houston, leaders should be careful that they don’t focus too much on the poor from New Orleans and elsewhere while ignoring Houstonians.

The compassion that Houstonians showed to Katrina evacuees should be harnessed to address the critical problems central to the city’s future, like poverty, pollution, and public education, Klineberg added. Houstonians’ response also could help change the city’s reputation as a community with little civic engagement. In a survey of 40 U.S. communities, respondents said that Houston embodies the issues that make civic engagement difficult—a vast metropolitan area, urban sprawl, long commutes, growing inequality, and an influx of immigrants. “But what we witnessed after Hurricane Katrina was an extraordinary outpouring of social capital,” Klineberg said. “This raises a disconnect between the survey results and how the community actually responded.”

Very possibly, Klineberg continued, Houston will see a demographic shift as a result of the hurricane. Previous domestic migrations brought mainly Anglos to Houston, but the domestic migrants from Katrina have been largely African American.

Katrina also taught city leaders an important lesson about how to respond to natural disasters. While there must be a thorough evacuation and response plan, White said there also must be room for improvisation. Perhaps the most important lesson learned, White said, was that “in a major metropolitan area with millions of people, we never will have emergency response mechanisms big enough to be a substitute for people helping people.”

—Dana Benson