POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE

2020 CENSUS

Counting Them Out

THE 2020 CENSUS, WHICH OFFICIALLY KICKS OFF ON April 1, will almost certainly reshape the face of politics and power in Texas. State legislative districts, as well as their congressional counterparts, will be redrawn; federal dollars for everything from highways and wastewater services to Medicare and food stamps will be reallocated.

This is why it’s imperative to obtain accurate population counts. To do that, the census follows a fairly basic principle: People are counted at their primary place of residence. For a city like Port Arthur, which sits along the hurricane- and flood-prone Gulf Coast, that could spell trouble.

In the past three years, Hurricane Harvey and Tropical Storm Imelda flooded large swaths of Southeast Texas and displaced hundreds of residents. “[Certain neighborhoods] in Port Arthur look like ghost towns—like something out of the Twilight Zone,” Hilton Kelley, a local environmental advocate, told the Observer. Some homeowners are stuck in limbo: They can’t receive federal assistance to rebuild their homes until they raise the structures above the ground, but they can’t afford the construction costs upfront. (In 2017, about 30 percent of the city’s residents lived below the poverty level.) “When the city or the General Land Office told people they had to lift their home off the ground and foot the bill for it, a lot of people left instead,” Kelley said. They went to live with relatives in Dallas or Houston, or even as far away as New York and California.

According to a Census Bureau spokesperson, “People displaced by natural disasters should be counted where they live and sleep most of the time”—not at the home