Disaster, Displacement, and Casework: Uncertainty and Assistance after Hurricane Katrina SUSAN M. STERETT Casework in the United States in social welfare programs has been limited in what caseworkers can do, as what they do has been tightly structured by rules. Recently, scholars have argued that episodic assistance in disaster brings sympa- thy in public policy more than restriction. The sympathy after disaster brings new money, and individual assistance is in turn the subject of casework. This article relies upon interviews, observations, and government documents to assess how casework served displaced people after Hurricane Katrina. The article finds that caseworkers after Katrina were caught in a program that would end at some uncertain time, and with new and unclear rules that changed frequently, making the sympathy difficult to enact for many of the poorest people. Casework after disaster is episodic and convened by nonprofits and, after Katrina, paid for by a large grant and then written into statute. Assistance for displaced people is likely to continue, given the expectation of more disasters and rising sea levels. The question of how it is like or unlike other forms of assistance and what sympathy in policy means in helping displaced people is therefore likely to continue to matter. INTRODUCTION Lisa worked as a case manager with displaced people after Hurricane Katrina in a metropolitan area more than a thousand miles from New Orleans. She was a young, white woman, hard working and warm, with soft brown eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. She had moved to take the job. Six months into working on Katrina relief, almost a year after the hurricane, I thank several anonymous reviewers as well as the editors of Law and Policy for comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am especially grateful to all the people who shared experiences of displacement and casework, including people who fled the storms, volunteers, government officials, and caseworkers. In addition, I am grateful for comments I received when I presented earlier versions of the article at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, University of Utah, and Virginia Tech. I am also grateful to Saylor Breckenridge, Erik Herron, Felicia Kornbluh, Kay Meyer, and Marjorie Zatz for comments and encouragement. Remaining errors are my own. Finally, I am grateful to NSF for its support, including via CMMI-055117 and SES-1051408. Address correspondence to Susan Sterett, Center for Public Administration and Policy, Virginia Tech, 1021 Prince St., Alexandria, VA 22314. Telephone: (703) 706-8110; E-mail: ssterett@vt.edu. LAW & POLICY, Vol. ••, No. ••, •• 2015 ISSN 0265–8240 © 2015 The Author Law & Policy © 2015 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary doi: 10.1111/lapo.12029