It's the largest mass resettlement that America has seen since the Civil War, as over 400,000 people—victims of Hurricane Katrina—try to find a new place to live. From the Houston Astrodome to an abandoned New Orleans street, stories of people looking for home...and finding something else.
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Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow
No Place Like Dome
Land Grab
As a half-dozen families—including a pregnant woman having contractions and another with a four-week-old baby—are driven around Houston looking for housing, they confront potential neighbors who they believe don't want them...and neighbors they themselves don't want. This American Life producer Lisa Pollak reports. (20 minutes)
The Long Way Home
Nick Spitzer, host of the Public Radio International music show American Routes, drives through deserted streets to return to his own house, and finds it doesn't feel at all like home. (14 minutes)
Water Bed
Louann Mims, a 78-year-old retiree, planned to leave her New Orleans house before the floodwaters rose, but then the water came rushing in and she was trapped in her house for eight days on the only thing that would float: her extra firm Sterns and Foster mattress. Ms. Mims talks with Alex Kotlowitz, the author of The Other Side of the River, Never a City So Real, There Are No Children Here, and other books. (10 minutes)
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The Problem We All Live With - Part One
There’s one thing that has been proven to cut the achievement gap between black and white students by half: integration.