Internally displaced persons in the United States are people from the Gulf States region in the southern United States, most notably New Orleans, Louisiana, who were forced to leave their homes because of the devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and were unable to return because of a multitude of factors, and are collectively known as the Gulf Coast diaspora and by standard definition considered IDPs. At their peak, hurricane evacuee shelters housed 273,000 people and, later, FEMA trailers housed at least 114,000 households. Even a decade after Hurricane Katrina, many victims who were forced to relocate were still unable to return home.
In 2005, around 1,500,000 people from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were forced to leave their homes due to Hurricane Katrina. Around 40% of evacuees, mostly people from Louisiana, were not able to return home. 25% of evacuees relocated within 10 miles of their previous county. 25% of evacuees relocated at least 450 miles away. 10% of evacuees relocated at least 830 miles away. "Returning home can be an important step for the health and economic stability of low-income, climate-displaced families. Evidence indicates that the climate displaced, particularly those who are low income, can suffer from greater hardships than they did prior to evacuation."
The population of New Orleans fell from 484,674 before Katrina (April 2000) to an estimated 230,172 after Katrina (July 2006)—a decrease of 254,502 and a loss of over half of the city's population. As of 2020, New Orleans had an estimated population of 383,997, still below the population of the city prior to Hurricane Katrina. However, not all those who moved to the city were returning residents. After Hurricane Katrina, the privatization push gained momentum. With the opportunity to enact proposals that had circulated since the mid-1980s, the city council voted unanimously to demolish 4,500 units of traditional public housing. In just over a decade—from 1996 to 2007—the city managed to close 85% of the city's public housing, adopting a system of "mixed-income" projects and vouchers instead. While liberals touted it as "deconcentration," the removal project effectively (and efficiently) displaced low-income residents from areas ripe for profit-making. As a result, 16,000 families remain on the waitlist for subsidized housing.
Pre-Katrina decrease in population
Prior to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans experienced a decrease in population of 18% (109,000 residents) between 1970 and 2000, which fell by a further 6% (30,000 residents) from 2000 to 2005.
Diaspora destinations
In the initial period following Hurricane Katrina, there were several useful sources of data about where displaced residents from New Orleans were living. In particular, information on the location of refugees was available from change-of-address forms filed with the U.S. Postal Service and from registrations with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for aid. Analyses of these data showed that nearly 15% of evacuees from New Orleans relocated to distant cities in the East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast. The main destinations for displaced residents were suburban New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Baton Rouge.
Demographics
As of 2008, just over half of the city's adult residents (56 percent) were African American, roughly one in three (35 percent) were white, and 5 percent were Hispanic. This is roughly equivalent to the shape of the population in a 2006 survey, fielded one year after Katrina. It is also fairly similar to the city's pre-storm distribution, as measured by the Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey (ACS), which found that the adult population was 60 percent African American and 32 percent Caucasian.