CL: Census Bureau faces challenge with Gulf Coast count, plans special effort for accuracy

U.S. census plans special effort for the Gulf Coast - even four years later, Katrina's effects still felt

WASHINGTON — Harold Toussaint evacuated first to Tennessee, then to Georgia, then to New York City after Hurricane Katrina left his rental house in New Orleans under 5 feet of water in 2005.

Like other hurricane victims, Toussaint says he plans to return soon to New Orleans. And that's where he wants the 2010 U.S. census to count him.

"It's our home," said Toussaint, 59, who has lived in Harlem for two years. "We want to be recognized as New Orleanians. It just breaks our hearts to be deprived of it and our connection."

Which city Toussaint calls home next April is at the heart of a debate over how displaced Gulf Coast residents should be counted in the 2010 census, less than six months away.

Much is at stake for communities devastated by the hurricanes and those in other states where thousands of storm victims fled. The census conducts a major population count every 10 years in addition to other, smaller counts, and results determine congressional seats and federal funding for such things as free school lunches and highway projects.

Next year, in an effort to better count Gulf Coast residents, census officials will hand-deliver more than 300,000 questionnaires to areas in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas that suffered heavy hurricane damage. The questionnaires will be mailed to people in the rest of the country.

"We're going to every address and dropping off the questionnaire because, quite reasonably, the residents there are saying, 'Well, the addresses where people were living ... are not going to be there,' " Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said.