Iberville Projects was a neighborhood in the city of New Orleans and one of the low-income Housing Projects of New Orleans. The Iberville was the last of the New Deal-era public housing remaining in the city. Its boundaries were St. Louis Street, Basin Street, Iberville Street, and North Claiborne Avenue. It is located in the 6th ward of downtown New Orleans, on the former site of the Storyville district (the city's official red-light district). The area has recently been redeveloped into a modernized apartment complex called the Bienville Basin Apartments.
History
20th century
The Iberville development was built on a ten-block site in the early 1940s as part of the Wagner Bill. The land was previously Storyville, the city's official red light district. In 1940, the city declared 95% of the structures in Storyville substandard, clearing the way for construction of the project. There were 858 units in the Iberville Project.
The call for public housing was met by the federal government with the U.S. Housing Act of 1937 while the Great Depression was taking a toll on the poor and unemployed in America. The government officials in New Orleans were the quickest act and immediately received the funding to build the initial six housing complexes in the city. Once the complexes were complete they were divided among the whites and blacks in the city with the blacks having four of the complexes in the less developed areas of the city. The Iberville Project was one of the two housing complexes the whites were given, named in honor of Pierre Le Moyne, sieur, d’Iberville, one of the founders of Louisiana. During segregation, the Iberville was occupied by whites, while the nearby Lafitte Projects served the black tenants.
Beginning in the late 1980s, when many cities were regenerating and real estate in downtown areas became ripe for private investment, developers began looking to redo the 23-acre Iberville project. In 2001, Tom Benson (owner of the New Orleans Saints) proposed tearing down Iberville and putting up a stadium. Then, in 2004, developer Pres Kabacoff proposed partially demolishing the project in order to reinvigorate the city's tourism economy and the urban core.
21st century
Although there was no significant damage, the Iberville project was closed following Hurricane Katrina. Representative Richard Baker (a Republican from a wealthy area of Baton Rouge) said after Hurricane Katrina: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it. But God did."
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin expressed a desire to redevelop the Iberville Projects in 2003. In May 2009, Nagin announced a HANO (Housing Authority of New Orleans) proposal to raze part of the Iberville project for redevelopment into mixed-income housing. In 2011, HANO and the city of New Orleans were granted $30.5 million by the U.S Department of Housing. The grant was for improving the neighborhood's sustainability and increasing access to high-quality services. The 1937 Housing Act made it possible for politicians and bureaucrats to demolish five thousand units of public housing in the midst of a staggering post-disaster housing crisis. Due to its close proximity to Canal Street French Quarter, tourist regularly wandered across Basin Street into the project and were often assaulted. Others were led there by residents and robbed. Los Angeles Times article published in 2006 stated "before Hurricane Katrina hit, the Iberville was as an extremely dangerous place."
Demolition of the Iberville Housing projects commenced in September 2013, with mixed-income housing being incorporated into the street grid of the surrounding neighborhoods. Human remains were found on a significant portion of the site, delaying redevelopment plans for months. These areas will be made into green space.
According to Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the Iberville Projects were redeveloped because of the location. Landrieu stated in the New Orleans Advocate that "This particular development, because of where it is — it is immediately adjacent to the Treme neighborhood, next to Canal Street, next to Rampart, next to the Claiborne corridor, across the street from what hopefully will be the new City Hall — that's all kinds of great promise." The renovation of Iberville Projects was executed in phases and created a total of 880 units catering to the needs of those who use affordable housing and housing units for the elderly. The renovations of the projects are a part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Choice Neighborhood Initiative and a program HUD developed to help change the inner-city into an area with schools, jobs, mixed-income families, and transportation.
