Poor blacks were more displaced by Hurricane Katrina
Poor, black residents of New Orleans were disproportionately displaced by Hurricane Katrina, a study released Thursday confirmed.
The demographic research by Brown University sociologist John Logan reinforced anecdotal observations and media images that showed the city’s most socially vulnerable residents were hit hardest by the Aug. 29 storm and subsequent flooding.
The study also raised questions about who will be able to return to New Orleans as it rebuilds. Examining the social differences among the city’s 13 planning districts and 72 neighborhoods, Logan found that New Orleans is at risk of losing up to 80 percent of its black population.
“The suffering from the storm certainly cut across racial and class lines,” Logan said. “But the odds of living in a damaged area were clearly much greater for blacks, residents who rented their homes and poor people.”
Logan based his conclusions on a combination of U.S. Census data and disaster classification information from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He also analyzed satellite maps of the area and last month visited New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
“I had mapped most of these data, and had an impression about it, but I didn’t want to do anything about it until I had seen it,” Logan said.
Despite his familiarity with the numbers, Logan said, his stay in the storm-ravaged area made a strong impression: “I have never been in a war zone,” he said. “But that analogy kept coming back to mind.”
Logan said he undertook the study because “I felt compelled on a personal basis to commit some time and energy to understanding what happened” in the hurricane zone. He found the damage wrought by Katrina to be a textbook example of how where someone lives can determine that person’s future.
Media reports at the time of the disaster that depicted an overwhelmingly poor, black population suffering from Katrina were not distorted, Logan said.
More than one-third of the 1.7 million residents of the region hit by Katrina lived in areas that suffered flooding or moderate to catastrophic storm damage, Logan said. His study found that the population of the damaged areas was 45.8 percent black, compared to 26.4 percent of the undamaged areas.
Nearly half the population in the damaged areas – 45.7 percent – lived in rental housing, compared to 30.9 percent in undamaged areas, he said. Within the areas that were damaged, the population living below the poverty line was 20.9 percent, versus 15.3 percent in the areas that were not damaged. Pre-Katrina unemployment was 7.6 percent in the damaged areas and 6 percent in undamaged areas.
The data also showed that while some of New Orleans’ affluent white neighborhoods were hard hit and some minority areas sustained little damage, those most affected by Katrina housed just half of the city’s white residents but 80 percent of its black population.