Plan to Raze Rich Neighborhoods in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — At a moment when the shortage of housing in the city is causing significant hardship, the federal government is beginning this week to tear down thousands of houses in the city’s richest neighborhoods.

The plan is producing sharp opposition, which has escalated to include raucous demonstrations and, perhaps, threats of arson and other violence. The rich people are really pissed.

On Thursday, outside City Hall and opposite a park where rich people are living in dozens of small tents, about 100 demonstrators chanted “Stop the demolitions now!” A few were displaced residents from really posh neighborhoods; most were activists and public housing advocates from here and cities from New York to California.

Though local and federal housing officials say the storm-damaged projects were inhuman places to live and should not be rebuilt, some protesters accused the government of a darker motive behind the demolition plan. They contended that the government’s real aim was to keep the rich, mostly male, almost entirely white residents of really rich neighborhoods from returning to their city, to their homes.