Sharon Jasper, 60, stands Monday afternoon near a fenced section of what used to be St. Bernard Public housing in New Orleans. In 2005, Jasper was forced to relocate after the community was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. (Thaisi H. Da Silva/NYT Institute)

After she was forced out by Hurricane Katrina, Sharon Jasper was certain she would be able to return to her home on a second-floor landing in the St. Bernard public housing project in Mid-City.

But on Monday, she stood at the front gate of what remains of St. Bernard, with its discolored brick and boarded windows. Her old apartment had been torn down, replaced by pristine townhomes with shaded balconies and budding trees, the first phase of a new Columbia Parc complex.

This isn’t the home Jasper knew. To her, it’s a symbol of how her city forgot her.

“We just knew we were going back,” Jasper said. “We hadn’t been evicted. We were still leaseholders. The buildings could have been revitalized, so why shouldn’t we go back?”

Jasper, who now lives in a duplex on Bruxelles Street, said she misses the cohesion of her old community. She is one of thousands of former residents of New Orleans’ “Big Four” low income complexes — St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, Lafitte and B.W. Cooper, all of which are being redeveloped into mixed-income communities. Displaced by the hurricane, some former tenants are now weathering the tempest of redevelopment.

After Katrina, city officials undertook extensive urban renovation to replace the barracks-style complexes built in the 1940s. Despite much public outcry, City Council members voted unanimously in 2007 to raze the Big Four. Replacing them are low-rise townhouses and garden apartments where low-income residents, market-rate tenants and private homeowners live side by side.

Council members believed years of neglect and mismanagement led to a failed social experiment in public housing.

About 4,600 low-income apartment units in the four projects are being replaced by about 4,000 modern apartments being built in phases. However, only about 1,000 units will be available for low-income residents. Tenants who were displaced, like Jasper, must apply to live in the townhouses if they want to return.

Reactions from residents and housing experts reveal a cross-section of realities for the New Orleans working class. Some have had to find new homes in an already bleak housing market, exacerbated by the lack of affordable housing following Katrina. For others, the change has brought benefits: brand new facilities and opportunities for lower rent.

Samuel Johnson, 31, moved into Columbia Parc after his rent skyrocketed after Katrina.

“Everywhere else is still charging an arm and a leg,” said Johnson, who had not been in public housing previously. “Where I stayed before, I was paying $905 for a two-bedroom, and I’m paying $764 over here.”

Then there are people like Isaac Johnson, 90, who has moved into a new Columbia Parc unit. He lived in St. Bernard for more than 50 years and, like many of his neighbors, had low rent and free utilities.

Although he said the new apartments are “beautiful,” and that he enjoys the family activities, Johnson now pays more for his new apartment. This has presented a financial burden he’s not used to shouldering. Sometimes, he says, he has to go to his daughter to help make ends meet.

“I’m on a fixed income,” he said. “I only get about $600 a month. After paying rent, utilities and insurance, there’s nothing left.”

Proponents of the new housing believe it helps eliminate blight, improves a community’s economic growth and, through effective management and resident involvement, can prevent drug use and violence.

Andreanecia Morris, director of public affairs and community development at Providence Community Housing, said the notion of people of different incomes living in the same area isn’t foreign to the city.

“New Orleans is already a mixed income city,” Morris said. “If you walk six blocks you can be in a totally different neighborhood, with the exceptions of the housing developments, which were islands of poverty.”

Morris, who oversees the Lafitte public housing project, says families in mixed-income communities benefit from the steady flow of money from homeowners and market rate tenants used to maintain the units, attentive management and better safety.

For residents in new housing developments, the experience can be mixed. Meghan Gallagher, a research assistant at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., says that although they enjoy new housing, many still face economic difficulties. Gallagher has studied the redevelopment of low-income communities in some of America’s major cities, focusing her recent work on the south side of Chicago, once notorious for crime and substandard living.

Although comparable to New Orleans in size, Chicago’s public housing remains for use by low-income families.

“Housing quality is a lot higher.” Gallagher said, referring to the projects after redevelopment. “There’s no chipped paint, rodents or other safety issues. I’ve had reports from residents saying it doesn’t feel like public housing as they knew it.”

But, she said, many residents still have trouble paying utilities and rent, because, like New Orleans, Chicago suffers from a lack of job opportunities.

“The level of employment and income has not changed since development,” she said. “So people have more responsibility, but no greater resources.”

It is partly for this reason that there is still strong opposition to redeveloped housing in New Orleans. Former residents feel as though they were left out of decisions and forced from their homes. Fees and deposits make affordability difficult and social advocates say demolition has effectively displaced many low-income residents.

Anita Sinha, senior attorney at the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization, represented many former residents of the Big Four who sued the city for wrongful eviction. She said the hurricane greatly affected working-class citizens because the majority of the homes damaged were in affordable housing areas like Central City and the Uptown area.

She added that she is troubled by the national sentiment to redevelop public housing, which she said patronizes people in affordable housing and has racial undertones.

“Some think if public housing families live next to a middle-income family, children will do homework better and they’ll have better job opportunities,” Sinha said.

The new housing uses the same model as a project built in 2004 that replaced the St. Thomas public housing project in the Garden District. The development served as a prototype for the Big Four changes.

Don Everard, director of Hope House, a neighborhood organization near River Garden, formerly the St. Thomas projects, said at least 300 St. Thomas families attempted to return to the new complex after the storm, but found themselves faced with a number of issues.

Some felt pressured because of stricter eviction regulations, or rules for guests.

“A lot of public housing residents have relatives who have had trouble with the law, and management put in rules about having guests who were ex-offenders,” Everard said. “If a person in the household gets in trouble, the whole family can be evicted.”

Everard said that low-income people are being exploited and that their welfare is not truly a concern of the city.

“They’re not valued,” he said. “They’re not valued by the housing authority, by HUD, or by the city in general. The thought is, ‘Whatever you get is good enough.’”

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