The 2020 census 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. The Observer wrote about how many Port Arthur residents hadn’t recovered from Hurricane Harvey one or even two years later.
