Posted 7/01/2007 05:55:00 PM by Douglas

HOU Orleans isn't going to go away anytime soon.

They're scattered across Houston's neighborhoods like pebbles flung from someone's hand. Now, almost two years into their Houston experience, this displaced population roughly the size of Beaumont longs for an identity free of Hurricane Katrina.

Among their number are students and professors, hamburger flippers and restaurant owners, entrepreneurs and frustrated job-seekers, criminals and victims of crime.

To bureaucrats and journalists, they are "Katrina evacuees." To their advocates and often to one another, they are "Katrina survivors." Someday, perhaps, they'll simply be Houstonians, but for now many still see themselves in transition.

"I regard myself as a Houstorleanian," said Mtangulizi Sanyika, a college professor and community activist forced to Houston from New Orleans by Katrina. He now splits his time between the cities. "Houston has to adapt to the reality that there are residents who still may be citizens of a different city in its midst."

As the second anniversary of Katrina approaches, leaders of agencies helping evacuees expect most of the estimated 100,000 living in Houston to remain here for the foreseeable future, if not permanently.

Well, again, who wants to live below sea level?