Desire Projects, New Orleans

Desire Projects was a housing project located in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. These projects were the largest in the nation and consisted of about 262 two-story brick buildings, containing about 1,860 units across 98.5 acres of land. The overall conditions of the projects were deplorable from the moment they were put into place in the later part of the 1950s. The projects were meant to serve the large number of underprivileged African American residents in the New Orleans area. Soon it became a place of despair, and Desire eventually evolved into a dark no-man’s land, leaving many residents infested with problems and little or no help from the government. Located in a cypress swamp and dumping ground, Desire was known as the poorest housing development in New Orleans—-it was bordered by railroad tracks, the Mississippi River, the Industrial Canal and a corridor of industrial plants. Historically the Desire was the city's most dangerous housing project and was documented as being one of the deadliest communities in the country. Most of the crime was due to drugs like Heroin that have plagued the project since the late 1960s. When crack cocaine arrived in the mid-1980s, the crime rate in the Desire increased, and violence intensified. As residents began moving out to flee the physical and social decay, abandoned apartments provided convenient places to stash drugs; drug deals and killings were commonplace. Desire's alleys and courts became a place where life was sometimes worth less than a pair of basketball shoes. The uptick in murders gave Desire a reputation for violence along with the nearby Florida Projects. In 1995, murders drastically decreased in the Desire project and the Florida development. The nightly gunfire that frequently shattered sleep in the Desire was largely gone; so were the outsiders who once grouped menacingly in the courtyards. That same year in February the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved a HOPE VI grant to HANO to improve the living environment through rehabilitation of the housing. Mass demolition began in 1997 and was by Complete razed by 1999. ()