New Orleans To Slash Low Income Housing

"The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, last week approved $31 million worth of contracts to demolish 4,500 public housing units of such high quality that some are on the National Register of Historic Places."

"The demolitions, scheduled to start as soon as Dec. 15, come as the city faces an unprecedented shortage of rental housing. To add insult to injury, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced last week that it would evict hundreds of residents of emergency trailer parks in New Orleans over the next six months, even though they don't have houses to return to."

"New Orleans tracts have been among the worst managed, suffering most of their damage from neglect by the Housing Authority of New Orleans. HUD took over the local agency and had determined before the storm to evict residents and demolish thousands of units."

"Low-income housing advocates were not the only defenders of these projects. Sturdily built and sensitive to local history, the tracts always had the potential to lose their "project" stigma and join the rest of the city as an invigorating mixed- income neighborhood."