re: Which historic NOLA housing projects featured the worst living conditions?

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In that area it was pretty sketchy. But like most neighborhoods in N.O., one block could be okay and the next could be crap. The farther from downtown the better it got. This was in the early to mid 90s.

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I think these projects really fricked up a lot of the city for a long time.

Desire/Florida projects were massive and housed thousands of people - many of which had a criminal history and contributed to New Orleans's crime epidemic. And they were probably close enough to Chef and New Orleans East to accelerate their decline.

I know these soviet-style housing projects were all the rage by progressive authoritarians of the 20th century. But it's still shocking to me that New Orleans had so many public housing units relative to its size. I imagine there were initially careful requirements and restrictions on residents there, but they definitely declined quickly. The city definitely kept them around way longer than they should have.