To pretend there weren't is to ask for the same problems to be repeated. Some of the reports were hyperbole, but under the hyperbole was a rather nasty reality. Nobody wants that, even if it does give racists a chance to say, "Ooh, look at them people there." So they're being proactive: Organization, support, structure are all in place when the first person arrives. That's a good thing.
The convention center here is packed. It's large. I wouldn't want to be there. Just you and thousands of your closest friends in a couple of very large halls, all able to walk up and do what they want unless the police are there. It's impersonal and if you volunteer there you are one of a couple hundred volunteers. The police are there because there are a lot of people just in case there's a problem of any kind. If you don't like the police, that's not for you.
The shelters that are smaller are 100-200 people. I'm not sure who's doing the "equipping" but much of the help is from donations and volunteers. Those smaller shelters are just fine. Churches here usually have kitchens and often have youth programs and some showers. Schools here certainly do.
One that I might wind up volunteering at tomorrow has a couple of hundred cots set up in the high school gyms. Adjacent are the boys and girls locker rooms with showers and towels and laundry facilities. 80 feet down the hall is the cafeteria, with foodservice staff that could come in coming in to provide hot meals. It's a high school. They're set up to feed 4000 students a day, so 200 people will underutilize one food line. Every hour during the school day a couple hundred people use the showers and facilities next to the gym, so that's not an issue. Heck, the "home ec" classrooms could easily turn out food to feed twice that number 3 square a day.
That's a smaller facility. In addition there's another related facility 10 minutes away by car. It has bathrooms, but no kitchen or showers. They're running shuttles so that those from the second facility can go use the showers and eat at the first. I don't know the racial makeup of those sheltering there. It's a mostly white area but there's a few large Latino or black areas not far away. Who's in the shelter depends on who was flooded. I might find out tomorrow.
One thing they learned, a hard lesson, is you don't want people taken away from their communities, from their homes, if at all possible. If people from 10 miles away are taken to large, impersonal shelters then come Tuesday those kids will have to have transportation back to their schools, workers will need transportation to their jobs and won't know the bus routes or have transportation. They'll be isolated from many friends. It's better for kids and families to stay near home. In Houston, badly segregated already, that means the shelters will automatically tend to reflect that segregation. But the explicit philosophy expressed by officials is that they want families return to normal as much as possible. They have to live in shelters for 2 months? Fine, send the kids to their usual schools, let people go to their usual jobs, shop in the usual stores, be around their usual acquaintances that *haven't* been forced to evacuate. Given the way the flooding's happened in Houston, along bayous and in parts of neighborhoods, that's manageable.
It's in the other areas that it's tough. Dickinson's evacuated, everybody. They're being taken to another city. In rural areas there may not be a shelter with 5 or 10 miles of where you lived.
The mayor is black and a Democrat. The chief of police is Latino and a Democrat. They're unlikely to make intentionally anti-black and anti-Latino decisions.
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