Subsidized Housing

To some, the four sprawling three-story brick complexes may not look like real estate worth fighting over. But with inhabitable housing of any kind at a premium here, the fate of New Orleans' four largest public housing complexes -- St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, B.W. Cooper and Lafitte -- is at the center of another battle in the city's turbulent efforts to reshape its future. The U.S.

A coalition of public interest law firms and civil rights groups Tuesday filed a class-action lawsuit against the Los Angeles Housing Authority, charging that the city agency broke the law when it effectively raised the rent for more than 20,000 poor residents.

Residents of a public housing complex atop toxic land are being urged to move because of fears that carcinogens are damaging their health. The state Environmental Protection Agency suggested that San Mateo County work with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to move dozens of people from the Midway Village low-income housing complex. The site is contaminated with polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, which have been linked to cancer.

It may have been a hoax, but an announcement Monday that the federal government was reversing course and reopening public housing projects it had slated for demolition exposed a fault line in this city's efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Onstage at an investors' conference with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, an impostor claiming to be an assistant secretary of the U.S.

A low-cost housing project for the mentally disabled has been approved by the Anaheim City Council on a 4-1 vote despite the objections of residents who live near the site. Dozens spoke out at a public hearing six weeks ago, arguing that the project would bring undesirables into their community. The council shelved the plan, saying that its 33 units -- most of them studios or one-bedroom apartments -- did little to address the city's shortage of low-cost family housing.

In the foothills of the San Fernando Valley sits a quiet retreat studded with low-slung buildings and lushly landscaped walkways. Birds chirp from swaying branches of sycamores and oaks and a multilevel koi pond near the entrance gurgles softly. It once was home to senior citizens who could live out their final years in nature's embrace. Now a homeless agency in downtown Los Angeles wants to convert the wooded, 71-acre property into transitional housing for 275 homeless women and children.

Confronted with the worst regional homeless problem in the nation, Los Angeles city housing officials hope to build thousands of heavily subsidized apartments for the most intransigent street people, placing them in buildings that will also offer medical care, counseling and job training. That model, known as "permanent supportive housing," is not a novel one: Los Angeles County already has about 5,000 supportive housing units.

Long before Hurricane Katrina deepened the nation's need for low-income housing, the government had a history of sheltering those in need. Subsidized housing dates to the Great Depression and the creation of what was known as public housing. In urban areas throughout the nation, the government built large concentrations of apartments and opened them to the very poor.

In her 35 years in a federally subsidized housing project here, Gladys Lewis reared five children, nine grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. She is such a familiar figure at Oakwood Village that just about everyone in the 100-unit complex calls her 'Mama' -- either that or the 'hood grandma, a nickname she likes just as well.

For 24 years, Gladys Franklin has called the Cabrini-Green projects home. The high-rise where she lives is decaying, and nearly a third of the doors and windows are boarded up. Squatters have broken into some of the apartments. Other units sit empty. The elevator works only when it wants to, so Franklin refuses to take it. Instead, she hobbles to the stairwell that reeks of urine. Stepping over a broken crack pipe, she inches down the 14 steps from her second-floor home.