Desire Projects

Desire Street Housing Development
General information
Location	2900 Desire Street, New Orleans, LA 70117  United States
Status	Demolished
Construction
Constructed	1952–1954
Demolished	1995–1999
Other information
Governing body	Housing Authority of New Orleans
Famous residents	Marshall Faulk

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.^[1] 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,^[2] 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.^[2]

Historically Desire was the city's most dangerous housing project and was documented as being one of the deadliest communities in the country.^[3] Starting in the late 1960s, most of the crime was from the residents having few legal economic opportunities and thus fighting for the income made available by the heroin trade. When crack cocaine arrived in the mid-1980s, the crime rate in Desire increased further as the regularity of 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 former residents would claim that life was often considered worth less than a pair of basketball shoes. The uptick in murders gave Desire a reputation for violence along with the nearby Florida Projects.^[4]

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.^[5] 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 the project was completely razed by 1999.