Houston Has Nation's Second Highest Homicide Rate

Homicide rate in Houston tops Dallas'

Houston's homicide rate surpassed Dallas' in 2006 for the first time in
more than a decade and is now the second-highest among the nation's largest cities, according to figures released Monday by the FBI.Houstonians were killed at a rate of 18.2 per 100,000 residents last year, a number that had gone
unmatched since 1995 when the FBI began posting crime statistics online. Dallas'
homicide rate was higher than Houston's in all of the previous 11 years.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4861918.html

This, from an HPD spokesman, doesn't inspire confidence:

In Houston, burglaries and robberies remained about the same during the two-year
period while the number of reported rapes slightly declined. Capt. Dwayne Ready, a Houston Police Department spokesman, said those figures can be construed as a "win" for the city. He added that homicides are typically difficult to curtail given that typically many are crimes of passion, involving people who know one another.

What this doesn't address is why the rate increased so much. There's no reason to believe Houstonians became any more "passionate" this past year. The article hints at another cause:

Houston has seen an uptick in homicides since more than 100,000 Louisiana
residents fled to the city after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"Babu," from Philly (the nation's leading city in this regard), in the comments section has interesting commentary on the subject.