"Almost everyone I've talked to says: 'We're going to move to Houston,' " Mrs Bush said late on Monday after visiting evacuees at the Astrodome with her husband, former president George Bush.
"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," she said.
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - this is working very well for them."