Nora Goddard

[Note: this is an edited version of an editorial first published in 2012, when the demolition of the Iberville projects was imminent. You may obtain the fully cited and illustrated copy as an eBook herehttps://books2read.com/u/bWL6zz]

               New Orleans’ first generation of public housing projects, some of the first built in the nation, were once lauded as examples of appealing and affordable housing to be followed. In the devastation following Hurricane Katrina generations later, their continued existence became a subject of debate. The eventual loss of nearly all of the original buildings, as well as nearly all the original occupants, changed New Orleans culturally as well as architecturally.  New Orleans public housing was built to be, in general, smaller and more architecturally integrated with the neighborhood than in many other American cities. With the exception of the Desire and Florida projects, the public housing here is on relatively high ground, and on what is now considered extremely valuable property. In this essay I examine three of New Orleans’ housing developments from three distinct historical eras that are representative of different approaches to public housing, and further examine how the demise of these buildings has impacted our city. I believe that these buildings should be protected from both demolition and from privatization. It is crucial to the historic fabric of our neighborhoods, and the communities that love them, that we preserve not just the impressive, beautiful buildings, but those occupied by working class citizens as well. These public housing buildings need to be preserved in their original function, not just in their original form- because our city and nation is experiencing a housing crisis that amounts to a human rights violation. The original purpose of public housing needs to be preserved to maintain a fair and just urban fabric, and to facilitate the rebuilding of New Orleans without disenfranchising large portions of its’ population.

               St. Thomas: The First Generation

The first public housing projects in the United States were in fact the St. Thomas Development, built in 1938-41, following the Federal Housing Act of 1937, which allowed for federal subsidizes to be paid to local housing agencies to improve living conditions, and the creation of the Housing Authority of New Orleans by Louisiana legislature in 1938. A cluster of two or three story buildings, they were built of solid brick masonry with cast iron balconies and spacious yards. Other examples of New Orleans’ first generation housing included B. W. Cooper, C. J. Peete, Lafitte, St. Bernard and Iberville, commonly referred to as the “Big Four.” These developments were all architecturally desirable and congruous, well located, and did not displace residents for their construction.

The St. Thomas development was centered in the square bounded by the river, Jackson, Magazine, and Felicity streets and originally had a total of 920 units, eventually growing to 1,500. This early era of public housing intended to improve the lives of the most desperately poor, when health codes and housing standards were being introduced, in many places for the first time. The Works Progress Administration worked with local and national newly-formed public health organizations to improve housing and infrastructure. In 1930s New Orleans many households still did not have access to clean water or modern toilets. It seems a certainty that the tidy brick buildings of the St. Thomas projects, with modern facilities and privacy for each family, was an improvement for many. Importantly, all neighborhood residents whose housing was razed to build the projects were given apartments there, allowing community ties and access to resources and transportation to remain intact.

By the 1970s tourism had supplanted the oil industry as New Orleans’ primary source of income. Construction of the Rivergate in 1968, the Superdome in 1975, and the Moonwalk in 1976 anchored the tourist district we are familiar with today, though decades of urban renewal and seizure of personal property through “slum clearance” preceded. By the end of the 1970s large chain hotels had sprung up on Canal Street, and zoning changes had abolished “flophouses” and low rent areas in and around the CBD, including New Orleans’ historic Chinatown and many other cultural heritage sites and historic neighborhoods. The general destruction of low income housing in the vicinity of the French Quarter immediately raised levels of visible homelessness, previously virtually unheard of in New Orleans.

As development increased through the late 20^th century, the St. Thomas projects became increasingly attractive to developers. Preservationists rallied to defeat the destruction of an interstate highway through the French Quarter and Lower Garden District. The Lower Garden District, where St. Thomas was located, was previously referred to as part of the Irish Channel. The renaming of the neighborhood, part of the spatial redefinition game, was a step towards protection of the area, as well as what many saw as the first step towards gentrification. Though preservationists undoubtedly did a service to the neighborhood by defeating the proposed river bridge, which would have displaced everyone, their desire for control over real estate in the area eventually drove out many original residents, including people made homeless by recent development in the CBD. Much of the rhetoric that was used to criticize the low income and public housing has long been ingrained in discussions about poverty, particularly when the public is expected to consent to forced removal and relocation: that the housing is “unsanitary” or “substandard,” and that the number of poor people are too “concentrated” and should be de-densified. Mayor Moon Landrieu sought to “increase self-sufficiency and responsibility of tenants,” and to wean people off government assistance (Cedric 57). When funds were earmarked to improve New Orleans’ housing, most of this money was funneled away from actual affordable housing.

               In 1988 the first move to displace St. Thomas residents was made with the issuance of a report by HANO advising the city to privatize all public housing, reduce the total number of units by half, and to cease all maintenance and improvements on the St. Thomas Project buildings. Known as the Rochon Report, it was prepared by Reynard Rochon, an associate of developer Pres Kabacoff. Residents immediately formed The St. Thomas Resident’s Coalition (STRC) to protest the privatization of their housing and negotiate for control. Various social service agencies and nonprofits worked with St. Thomas residents to negotiate agency over their housing, and over $8 million of funds were raised, purportedly to help residents with building maintenance. STRC effectively gained control of the buildings, but the funds went largely unaccounted for, absorbed by nonprofits and bad actors. St. Thomas eventually into disrepair as the city would neither perform maintenance nor would they intervene on residents’ behalf a clear case of calculated disinvestment. In 2001 HANO evicted all residents, and the St Thomas projects were demolished and the site was transformed into mixed income, privately owned, for profit housing development. While 1,500 public housing units had been lost, developers finally replaced only 200, and the displaced residents were not given the right to return. Now the River Garden apartments, their website proclaims, “Old New Orleans is new again!”  Despite all the rhetoric about “decentralizing” poverty, almost all the residents were relocated to the St. Bernard Projects.

            Urban Renewal Refugees: The Desire Projects

The Housing Act of 1949, enacted during the Truman administration, funded “slum clearance” and the urban renewal projects, which New Orleans took part in enthusiastically. In the 1950s and 1960s, public housing was increasingly built to house the thousands of disenfranchised people displaced by urban renewal projects. This is the era that hundreds of residents were evicted from the Treme to build Armstrong Park, the Municipal Auditorium, and the Claiborne expressway, which had spared the French Quarter of Lower Garden District to plough through the Treme instead. Midcentury planners saw the interstate highway system as a way to bring much-needed to modernity, and the violent displacement of whole neighborhoods to high-rise projects must have seemed inevitable. Notoriously dangerous the Desire and Florida developments are the projects that are used to persuade us of the impossibility of public housing and thereby justify its destruction. Huge in scale, uninspiring architecturally, and isolated from vital urban resources, these complexes bred unhappiness and crime through their layouts, their locations, and their lack of maintenance.

                When they were built in 1954, the Desire projects were one of the largest projects in the US, with 1,860 units. The site was highly undesirable, being former cypress swampland that had to be drained for construction. By the 1990s the buildings had already sunk over three feet (Annual Reports 1952-64). They are severely isolated from the rest of the city by Interstate 610 to the west, railroad tracks to the east, and the Florida canal to the south, rendering it virtually impossible for residents to participate in the rest of the city economically or socially. As population in “Big Four” housing declined as residents were slowly displaced from their homes, the population of the Desire and Florida Projects grew. Desire Project residents also suffered vicious abuse from the police and neglect by the housing authorities. The New Orleans Black Panther chapter, many of whom had been forcefully moved from other public housing projects to Desire, were instrumental in helping Desire residents advocate and organize. Panthers also organized child care, free breakfast programs, and political protests. Upon receiving an eviction notice, they stated, “You moved us to build interstates we can’t afford to buy cars to drive on. This time we ain’t moving..” This protest resulted in an armed standoff with NOPD. Lolis Elie, the lawyer who defended the protestors in the resulting legal aftermath, described the Desire projects as very different from other public housing in New Orleans. “The Magnolia had nice brick houses, indoor plumbing. They had hot and cold water. They had a lot of things people in my neighborhood [Black Pearl] didn’t have.”  About Desire, Elie said the conditions were oppressive and brutal, a world apart. For more on the often under-recognized impact of the New Orleans Black Panthers, I recommend Orissa Arend’s self-published document, available at Tulane’s Special Collections library, where these quotes were found. Desire was chronically neglected, and began to be dismantled in the early 2000s. By 2003 it was completely demolished, with two buildings initially preserved.

Post-Katrina World: The fate of Iberville

               The war against public housing was already well under way when Katrina hit, but until then the community resistance had been prolific, organized, and powerful. But in the chaos following Katrina, the city made their move to take over the projects once and for all. Over 80% of public housing in New Orleans was closed after the storm, despite the fact that many properties had not flooded (Arena 160). “First-generation” housing projects such as Iberville were well located not just because of their proximity to the city, but because of their relatively high elevation. As Louisiana congressman Richard Baker shamelessly said in the weeks following Katrina, “we finally cleaned up public housing. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”  Finis Shellnutt, a New Orleans real estate mogul rejoiced, saying, “The storm destroyed a great deal and made plenty of room to build houses to sell for a lot of money. Most importantly, the hurricane drove poor people and criminals out of the city, and we hope they don’t come back.” These and other improprieties and overt racism are detailed in Cedric Johnson’s Neoliberal Deluge.

 Developers saw Katrina damage as a catch-all excuse to force demolition of public housing and thereby open the land up for development. Between 1995 and 2005 HUD, with their “HOPE VI” initiative, had already demolished literally half of New Orleans public housing- 7,000 units were left, from about 14,000. Now they could finish the job. Playing upon racism and fear of poverty heavily fueled by the media, HOPE VI claims to improve poor people’s lives by displacing them “temporarily” to construct “mixed income” housing. This plan hinges on the promise that public housing units will be replaced one for one after the original buildings are demolished. However, the Urban Institute reports that the number of units available for the poor to live in is ultimately cut in half as a result of the program.

               This brings us to the present fate of the Iberville Projects. Like St. Thomas, Iberville was constructed during segregation for white residents, with demographics shifting to be almost entirely Black residents by the 1990s. Like St. Thomas, the masonry buildings are well proportioned, spacious, and in a desirable location long coveted by developers. The 75 original buildings were constructed with trussed gable and hipped roofs, with plaster on brick interiors and ceramic tile roofs. The site was previously occupied by Storyville, New Orleans’ legalized red light district. In 2004, Community, Concern, Compassion-Hand Off Iberville (C3), a grassroots volunteer-led group, successfully thwarted privatization and development of the Iberville site.

When HUD refused to allow residents back into their apartments in December of 2005, four months after Hurricane Katrina, C3 New Orleans Housing Emergency action Team (NO-HEAT), and others staged protests forcing the city to reopen the buildings. While Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the city in August 2005, Iberville had been spared, its condition documented via video photography. C3 had successfully thwarted privatization of Iberville in 2004, the year before Katrina. Throughout 2006 and 2007 residents of Iberville, St. Bernard, Lafitte and other public housing projects protested at HANO meetings and outside Mayor Nagin’s home demanding the housing be returned to them, and filed a class action lawsuit against HUD. Many activists were arrested and harangued as “squatters” and “criminals” in the news (John Arena, Driven from New Orleans). The downtown tent city known as Survivor’s Village was erected in 2006 by various former residents of New Orleans public housing. Lafitte demolition was delayed, but go ahead was still given for C.J. Peete and B. W. Cooper. Iberville residents eventually re-gained access to their Iberville apartments.

               In 2007 the Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act ordered the reopening of 3,000 public housing units in New Orleans and mandated one-to-one replacement of all public housing already demolished. Yet, the city continued to keep residents away from public housing, while also failing to house the almost 30,000 residents living in FEMA trailers across the city and region. Bullet proof panels and security cameras were installed on public housing buildings, and mold remediation processes were halted. In November 2007 large portions of this bill were dismissed by Judge Ivan Lemelle, and HANO announced their intentions to go forward with their redevelopment plan. As of today, seven years after the storm, the Times-Picayune reports of the 3,077 displaced households only a few hundred have been allowed to return home.

Although HANO described the buildings as “sturdy and externally handsome,” renovation was deemed unacceptable “as it would result in a significantly lower unit count (e.g., 2-bedroom apartments would be converted to 1-bedroom apartments) as larger, modern residences are required to meet the housing needs of current residents;…. would not result in a truly mixed-income community as renovation alone would not appeal to market rate residents.” Their plan further states “To reinvent Iberville/Tremé as a successful mixed-income neighborhood, it will be critical to capture the employees of the Biomedical District as new residents. Affluent, educated, and professionally dedicated, they will be attracted to the low-maintenance, convenient, amenity-rich housing and neighborhoods.” In essence, they want Iberville to be inhabited. But not the people who already live there.

               As to the threatened bio-medical district – it is not surprising in the least that the destruction of New Orleans’ public housing will tie in neatly with the demolition of an entire working-class historic midcity neighborhood, much of it renovated after Katrina with FEMA grants. The fate of Iberville seems to be the latest inevitable injustice in the bleak historic trend of working-class and poor people being violently displaced in the name of their own improvement. The buildings are blithely referred to as “decimated,” “uninhabitable,” and “obsolete,” yet all physical evidence contradicts this, as do the ignored pleas of residents to allow them to return to their homes, “obsolete” as they may seem to “market-rate” residents. To put it bluntly: whether the housing is adequate or not, where are they supposed to go? HANO has essentially found a loophole in the federal one-for-one rule. They are relocating residents one-for-one, but they are being spread across the entire Treme neighborhood- technically from Tulane to St. Bernard, and from Rampart to just past Broad. The residents will be scattered across the whole district, many of them directly across the street from OPP. What I find most frustrating about this is that there has been absolutely no publicity about this, ever, yet demolition could begin as early as December 2012. “This is a government-sanctioned diaspora of New Orleans’s poorest African American citizens,” said Bill Quigley, a lawyer for displaced residents. “They are destroying perfectly habitable apartments when they are more rare than any time since the Civil War.”

               The final chapter in the saga of American public housing is its’ sly conversion to mixed-income housing, and promised (rarely followed through on) replacement of destroyed affordable units. Of the 5000 public housing units demolished since Katrina to build mixed income housing, less than 800 of those units have been replaced. When residents are provided with a replacement unit, it is inevitably in a less desirable location. Many Iberville residents say they are being relocated to random sites in unfamiliar neighborhoods, with far fewer resources than the French Quarter and Canal Street-adjacent projects. “This is a government-sanctioned diaspora of New Orleans’s poorest African American citizens,” said Bill Quigley, a lawyer for displaced residents. The privatization of public housing has transformed it from a social service to an amalgamation of the real estate, construction, and investment industries, and is designed to enhance the resources of these industries, not to serve citizens. The mass closing of public schools, firing of teachers, and closing of health care facilities such as Charity Hospital have also contributed to an atmosphere of extreme hardship for New Orleans’ poor trying to return from Katrina.

What of Preservation?

Ultimately, all of the WPA era projects mentioned here were demolished, with Iberville being the last to come down, shortly after this essay was first published. What has been done to public housing residents in New Orleans over the last decades is a human rights violation. The UN called on officials to “protect the human rights of African Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina” by “immediately halting the demolition of public housing in New Orleans”, yet the demolitions proceeded  Though the fight for public housing in New Orleans has been a human rights battle for years, the destruction of Iberville will permanently alter the cultural landscape of the Treme, the French Quarter and New Orleans as whole, and should be on the forefront of a historic preservation battle, as well. In New Orleans we trumpet the cultural heritage of our city, and we have working class people to thank for much of that cultural heritage- from the shotgun house to the po boy to second lines, most of us can see that what makes our cultural heritage significant comes from poor, and primarily Black residents. While public housing has long been overlooked as a cultural and architectural resource, in recent years shifts in viewpoint have led several public housing projects, such as the Alazan-Apache Courts in San Antonio, to be found eligible both for historic tax credit programs and for listing on the National Register.

Hurricane Betsy, in 1965, was the worst hurricane to ever hit New Orleans at the time. It devastated 5000 square miles in Louisiana, with 160 mph winds. Almost all the public housing projects in New Orleans were damaged. The Florida projects retained over six feet of water, and Desire over five. They all retained structural damage, including roofing materials and siding being ripped off, and all residents belongings being destroyed.  At the time federal funds were used to hire the residents to repair the buildings, and they were continued to be used for decades after. Today, even after decades of neglect and calculated disinvestment, the solid masonry buildings of New Orleans’ Big Four stand the test of time better than many newer buildings. To refuse to refurbish them now is foolish and short-sighted.

The Iberville Projects, the last remaining original New Orleans public housing, are incredibly significant culturally and historically, as well as being objectively beautiful buildings with their sturdy brick construction, decorative cast iron, and ceramic tile roofs. Although many are in poor condition, they in fact retain much architectural integrity as well as historical significance for their importance in New Orleans history. They should be preserved in their form and their function, as true affordable housing. They may not be luxurious enough to appeal to market rate buyers, but that is not what their original intent was.

If you like this article, please share it!