Capella Tucker
The Astrodome contained about 25,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in 2005.
Twenty years ago, New Orleanians began arriving in Houston by the busload.
Michael Moore served as chief of staff under then-Houston Mayor Bill White. He remembered thousands of evacuees arriving at the Astrodome. Over the next few months, city officials scrambled to find them housing and schools for their children.
He said there was never any question about ensuring that evacuees felt welcome and had their needs met.
“You have to take care of your neighbor. It wasn’t a choice. It’s what you do, and Houston, Harris County stood up and did it,” Moore said. “Our diversity is our strength, and they added to the diversity.”
Researchers and city officials estimate anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 evacuees from Louisiana came to the Houston area. As the days stretched into weeks, the attitudes of some Houstonians toward the displaced communities turned frosty — and, in some cases, vitriolic.
John Dillman and his wife rode out Hurricane Katrina, scooping water out of the three-story building that housed their living quarters and bookstore. After the storm passed, they emerged and saw “tremendous devastation.” They quickly realized they would have to evacuate to Houston, where they saw the psychological destruction the storm wrought on their fellow New Orleanians.
“One of the things that really impressed me was people in public spaces, on the sidewalk downtown, screaming into cell phones because of their difficulty in getting to their own capital or credit or any of that sort of stuff,” Dillman said. “New Orleanians especially had difficulties with the banking system.”
Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media
John Dillman, behind counter, interacts with a customer at his bookstore in Houston. Dillman is among those who left New Orleans for Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
He said the warm welcome was heartening — especially considering how traumatized the evacuees were.
“I think what really counted was the initial reception,” Dillman said. “I’m not saying that there wasn’t a reversal of that, but it was the initial impact that was so heartening.”
RELATED: After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans evacuees changed Houston — and Houston changed them
Among some Houstonians, there was a reversal over time. In an opinion poll conducted by Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research in 2006, 49% of respondents said the evacuees were bad for the city. By 2008, that figure reached 70%.
“What we found, that was interesting to us, anyway, was that people were warmer and had a better perception of Katrina evacuees the closer they were to the inner loop, or the Astrodome, where a lot of the evacuees initially set up,” said Jim Elliott, co-director of Rice University’s Center for Coastal Futures & Adaptive Resilience. “What we don’t know, but we’ve speculated — these are people that actually interacted with the evacuees, got to know them as people, see their troubles, want to help them, instead of having them be some abstraction.”
Jermaine Moore said he was among the evacuees who experienced a mixed reception after arriving in Houston. He remembered some Houstonians saying “go back to the ghetto” and using racial slurs.
He said he lost seven family members and four friends after the storm hit New Orleans and the levees failed, flooding the city.
“I own two businesses and four houses. That’s what I just lost,” he said. “But you’re telling me, ‘Oh, we know you all on welfare and go back to the ghetto.’ … Insulting my people, but yet you’re watching us drown and die on TV.”
Despite the discrimination, he appreciated the overall welcome.
“I know a lot of people did not like us or thought we were going to bring crime or hated us being here,” he said, “but the majority of Houstonians welcomed us with open arms.”
Justin Doud/Houston Public Media
Jermaine Moore, left, gets a haircut from John “Speedy” Riddle, a fellow Hurricane Katrina evacuee, on July 11, 2025, in Houston.
In Houston, researchers found, certain categories of crime ticked up after Hurricane Katrina, though the trend wasn’t widespread or pervasive. Homicides and robberies rose by a statistically significant amount, while aggravated assaults, rape and nonviolent property crimes did not, leading researchers to conclude the evacuees did not cause a crime wave.
Still, city officials delivered stern warnings. Michael Moore, the chief of staff for White, recalled the mayor saying the city had a “special housing program for those who violate our criminal laws — it’s called jail.”
“Ninety-five percent of the people that came from New Orleans were great citizens, wonderful people,” Moore said. “Their drug dealers were a little bit rougher than our drug dealers, and so there was an issue for a time. Crime spiked in certain areas, and then it went back down.”
Local officials were more focused on taking care of the evacuees than policing them. Moore said 12,000 sheltered in the Astrodome, along with 18,000 across the rest of the NRG Park complex as well as 5,000 in the George R. Brown Convention Center and tens of thousands in hotels, faith-based centers and in the homes of relatives and friends across the region.
“It was a Herculean, if that’s the right word, effort,” he said. “It was a huge effort that so many people were involved to make it happen. Not only were there emergency management teams from the entire area and the state, but faith-based communities and neighbors.”
Researchers estimate tens of thousands of evacuees remain in the region, 20 years later.
Moore is frequently reminded of their presence when he sees the New Orleans Saints’ fleur-de-lis logo on the bumper of cars.
“It reminds you of what happened when I see it,” Moore said.