Abstract

Sustainable Senior Housing for Area of Highest Katrina Evacuee Concentration
Track: Disaster and Emergency Management
Authors: Paul Suckow

On August 28th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the southern coast of the United States with devastating effect. What followed was the largest displacement of people since the great Dust Bowl migrations of the 1930s. Nothing remaining in New Orleans, tens of thousands made new lives for themselves in Houston and elsewhere. Rental assistance data for about 45,000 families who had evacuated to Houston was assembled by the Disaster Housing Assistance Project (DHAP). By December 2008, DHAP still housed over 1,000 households supported by tenuous extended FEMA funds. The elderly had no place to go. The Harris County Housing Authority proposed a project to acquire property in the area of greatest evacuee concentration to build a new 80-unit apartment complex for senior survivors in need. That area was identified by a concentration analysis of geocoded contemporary DHAP address records. A LEED-Platinum premier senior housing complex resulted in northern Harris County, Texas.