HUD plans to demolish some of New Orleans' largest housing projects

NEW ORLEANS (AP) The federal government said Wednesday it will demolish some of the largest public housing projects in New Orleans, using the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to help improve poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods.

After the demolition, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said it would build mixed-income developments on the sites.

Endesha Juakali, a former resident of St. Bernard who ran a youth center nearby, said he has little confidence that if St. Bernard is destroyed, promises of better housing will be fulfilled.

``Every time, they make a promise, the politician changes, and another politician comes in, and they forget the promises,'' said Juakali, noting that the Bush administration comes to a close in less than three years. ``If they tear down St. Bernard, poor people are never going to live there again.''

http://www.wbz.com/topic/ap_news.php?story=AP/APTV/National/a/a/Katrina-PublicHousing-aa

The semi-rich and the rich. That'll be the income mix in the new housing.

By all means, house the rich there.

I think we should write letters encouraging it.

...I'm sure the developers will spend billions of tax dollars making sure that at least that part of town will never flood again, before they build the McMansions on it. Or they'll just offer the owners tax-backed insurance at subsidised rates to ensure they can rebuild as many times as they need to.

But they will.

:cry:

no one should have so little hope in life that they are housed in a place like st. bernard projects rather than in a nice little condo

have you ever seen them? you would not be willing to live there, you would not be willing to walk thru there

well other women shouldn't have to live there or walk through there either

Don't kid yourself. The condos are for people with money.

However terrible housing is, bulldozing it and throwing the occupants out onto the street doesn't help anybody. Alternative housing the poor could afford would help them, being left on the street won't.

was overheard talking with some lobbyists, and he told them "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

This was reported by the Wall Street Journal, and as soon as I read this post, I was reminded of that.

Designed to "whiten up" the town.

.

it was never right that poor people were forced into such filthy, dirty, violent slums to begin with

and now people want to preserve them?

ethnic cleansing indeed!

i'm tired of the attitude that we need to house people of different colors or ethnicities in horrible, dangerous, filthy slums, you would not want to be an aging lady in such a slum, you would not want to be a mother with a child there

but it's okay for other people?

i don't agree that slum housing needs to be rebuilt, poor people and esp. poor people w. vulnerable health conditions need to be in safe places on high ground, and if that means houston or baton rouge, so be it, there is no way to get people without cars safely out of this city and the new hurricane plan has NO shelter of last resort in new orleans

to bring the poorest of the poor back to new orleans would be the real ethnic cleansing

and, yeah, i realize that "other" cities are getting tired of the evacuees but they are just going to have to deal, frankly, the toothpaste is not going back in the tube, genie is not going back into the bottle, you are not getting every poor person on low ground back on low ground to go thru the whole mess again

i don't know what is sadder than the sight of people who have so little hope for the future that they are actually trying to tear down boards to get into a horrible place like st. bernard projects, it really makes you lose hope in this country that they have been evacuated to places even worse than that