WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- Only 43 percent of all New Orleans, Louisiana, evacuees living in emergency shelters in Houston, Texas, said they would move back home, and as many - 44 percent - said they planned to settle elsewhere, a poll published on Friday showed.

    Of those planning to return, many said they would look to buy to rent somewhere other than where they lived, and only one in four said they wanted to move back to their old homes, according to the survey, which was conducted by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health.

    Most of them who did not plan to go back to New Orleans are already living in their new hometown, the survey found.

    Fully two in three of the 44 percent who would not return said they planned to permanently relocate in the Houston area, which isnow home to about 125,000 New Orleans evacuees.

    The poll found that the evacuees would start their lives with virtually nothing. Seven in 10 currently do not have a savings or checking account, and just as many have no usable credit cards.

    The poll surveyed 680 randomly selected evacuees in Houston from Sept. 10 to 12, and has a margin of sampling error of puls orminus fur percentage points.

    About 1 million people were displaced from the Gulf Coast region devastated by Hurricane Katrina, which pounded Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on Aug. 29 leaving hundreds dead. Enditem