The experience of residents of the city's former St. Thomas housing project has bred further skepticism, advocates say. The complex, originally designed to house around 1,500 families, was demolished in 2002. So far, 296 units have been constructed, 122 of them as low-income housing.
"We are not against the redevelopment of public housing," Marshall said. "We are against the process. I'm not for tearing down something that's livable when it will result in thousands of families being homeless. They need to start renovating before they demolish."
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$140,000 loss cited
Linda Lockhart, one of the few dozen residents who have been allowed to move back to the B.W. Cooper complex, wept as she spoke of losing an estimated $140,000 worth of household goods and personal belongings, acquired through decades of scrimping and saving.
"If we had been allowed to return home sooner, I could have saved some things," said Lockhart, 51. Tenants were shut out for several months after Katrina, allowing vandals to ransack and steal possessions not destroyed by the storm.
Lockhart, a security company worker who raised two college-educated children at Cooper, shares a cramped one-bedroom unit with her daughter. Both sleep on the floor. They have one bamboo chair and no dining-room set. The view from the back porch is rows of dark and deserted flats, some with missing doors and shattered windows.
"If somebody had given me a house, I wouldn't be back," Lockhart said. "But I can't make it out there. When I lived [at Cooper] before, I was able to save money because the rent was reasonable, and I had a steady paying job."
Few public housing residents deny that crime was sometimes a problem, but they say troublemakers were typically outsiders. And Quigley, the lawyer, said that given the recent surge of murders in the city -- 15 killed since Jan. 1 -- it's clear that criminality is not confined to public housing, since most of the complexes are closed.
Babers, however, pointed to the Iberville complex, near the city's French Quarter: Over seven months through December, the complex was the site of 12 murders, he said.
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A reoccupation
Iberville residents forcibly reoccupied their complex after Katrina. Former St. Bernard residents are following that example.
Relatives helped Stephanie Mingo, a mother of four, pry off a steel cover sealing her front door so she could start washing and disinfecting the apartment.
Power and water have been shut off at St. Bernard, and rodents inhabit the filth. But diehard residents said they would continue to clean the complex until authorities allowed them to return.
"Soon you're gonna be sittin' on my porch while I braid your hair," Mingo shouted to a neighbor as she raced across the compound to reclaim her unit.
"Girl, just like the ol' days," the woman shouted back.
