New Orleans
At night, from the third floor landing of her
three-bedroom apartment, Keywanda Wiggins has a view of the glittering
New Orleans skyline. Visible from her window are the bulbous Superdome,
most of the city’s modern high-rises, and a slice of the Mississippi
River.
The view immediately below, however, is less spectacular. Stray
dogs wander on a wide street that separates two solid orange-brown
columns of buildings. During the day, music blares from car windows as
groups of too-often unsupervised children ride bikes and play ball.
This is the heart of the Guste Low Rise Housing Development.
Near the backyard fence of the neighboring Guste High Rise is an
unsightly dumpster packed with garbage. A collection of old bathtubs,
stoves, and refrigerators offers visual testimony to a recent spate of
apartment renovations.
“This place is much better than it used to be,” says the
twenty-three-year-old who like her mother and grandmother, has spent
most of her life at Guste. “There is just more work going on here now,
more things getting Gleaned up and fixed up.”
“I don’t even want to tell you what it used to be like,” says
Cynthia Wiggins, Keywanda’s mother. “It wasn’t just that we had
problems, we couldn’t seem to get anything done about them. The
management around here was always changing, and if you needed something
taken care of, nobody could help you or had the authority to do so. It
was a mess.”
