In 1996, there were over 13,500 units of public housing in New Orleans. By the time Hurricane Katrina hit in August of 2005, this number had diminished to 5,146 units.
HANO and HUD used Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to enact its long time plan to finally rid New Orleans of almost all of the city’s public housing. The city announced that “the big four” developments, C.J. Peete, B.W. Cooper, Lafitte and St. Bernard would be demolished and made into privately owned ‘mixed income’ developments. This decision has displaced over 4000 families. According to MIT professor, John E. Fernandez, who performed an extensive assessment of all four developments, there was “no structural or non-structural damage that would reasonably warrant any cost-effective building demolitions…Replacement of these buildings with contemporary construction would yield buildings of lower quality and shorter lifetime duration.”
The new mixed income developments will reduce the number of public housing units by an average of 91%. Four and half years later, none of these developments have been opened.
Read a New York Times article criticizing the demolition of New Orleans’ Public Housing.
The demolition of these developments and the displacement of its residents is an act of economic and racial discrimination. Many former public housing residents have been forced into homelessness or out of the city.
Watch the Advancement Project’s three-part documentary “This Is My Home” about the demolition of New Orleans’ public housing: