NEW ORLEANS – The decaying brick buildings of what was known as the Magnolia Projects are now rows of freshly painted town homes with ornate balconies and manicured lawns. Stoops where dealers once sold dope and shot at rivals have been replaced by a clubhouse featuring a flat-screen TV and a pool where neighborhood kids splash. The Magnolia Projects, once one of the city’s most notorious public housing complexes, today is Harmony Oaks Apartments, a 460-unit mix of government-subsidized and market-priced apartments. It replaces one of six public housing projects across the city recently razed to make room for new apartments and a fresh approach to housing the city’s poor.
“I never thought I’d be able to live like this,” says Harmony Oaks resident Larry Berzat, 60, who grew up in the former Magnolia Projects. “It’s a whole lot safer. And a whole lot better.”
New Orleans’ traditional model of corralling all subsidized housing into one location is being replaced by newer developments that mix subsidized and market-priced homes. More than 900 such units have opened in New Orleans already; another 3,100 are on the way. Public housing projects in Chicago, Atlanta, Salt Lake City and other cities have followed a similar trend, says Linda Couch of the Washington-based National Low-Income Housing Coalition. What makes New Orleans unusual is how the city toppled all of its major public housing projects at once, choosing a swift overhaul to its public housing over a phased redevelopment, Couch says. “People will be watching New Orleans closely,” she says.
Residents and city leaders agree that the new developments are far more livable and draw less crime than the previous structures, some of which were more than 8 decades old. But housing advocates warn that the new plans will steeply drop the number of available public housing units, leaving thousands of low-income families without affordable places to live.
Across the city, about 3,500 fewer units will be available, says James Perry, head of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center.
“You’re going to have a large number of people without housing,” Perry says.