The advocates also argue that tearing them down prevents a key segment of the city's workforce from returning, and excludes thousands from the city's rebuilding process.
Nearly all the families who lived in New Orleans public housing were African Americans on low incomes.
"It's definitely about race and class," said Judith Browne-Dianis, co-director of Advancement Project, a Washington-based civil rights and racial justice group that is also representing tenants in a class-action lawsuit seeking to restore them to their apartments. "If you look at what happened after Hurricane Katrina, the people who were residents of public housing were the people who were left behind at the Superdome and Convention Center, and now they are the same people who are being locked out."
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'It's affordable housing'
For former Lafitte tenant Jeffrey Hills, 31, a tuba and sousaphone player, the desire to return to the projects is simple.
"It's affordable housing," said Hills, who used to pay $400 a month rent, which included utilities, for a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony and parquet floors. "I'm a young man with three kids. I can't afford to pay $1,500 in rent."
The sense of place, community ties and social networks are also what former tenants say they miss most.
"Every single person still displaced is constantly reevaluating wishes to come home with the unfolding reality they are not welcome at this point," said William P. Quigley, another attorney for the plaintiffs.
But Babers said tenants were swayed by nostalgia and had been isolated in such communities for so long that they were unable to consider alternative, viable living arrangements.
"It's a 1940s mind-set," said Babers, a reference to when many of the projects were built. "Change is difficult for people. They're afraid of the unknown."
Brown, his colleague, recalled how plans for demolishing and rebuilding public housing in other cities, such as Chicago and Atlanta, had met similar resistance.
But once tenants moved into new, modern units in mixed-income neighborhoods with easy access to shops and schools, the opposition quickly waned, Brown said.
Jacquelyn Marshall, 36, a former resident of C.J. Peete, said tenants' reluctance to forsake their old units stemmed from distrust that the authorities would do right by them.
