Garber: Coming Home

— -- Reporter: "Desire Housing Project, please."Cabbie: "What?"Reporter: "The Desire Projects, in the Ninth Ward."Cabbie: "Uh, no. No way. You don't go in there. I mean, the po-lice don't even go in there."

NEW ORLEANS -- The project named Desire, about eight miles northeast of downtown, was completed in 1954. There were 262 three-story units, and they housed 14,000 people, at the time the second-largest public housing facility in the county.

Today, Desire is clearly a project that failed.

Like the rage in Langston Hughes' "Raisin in the Sun," it exploded long ago; most of the units were razed by bulldozers. The residue of Tennessee Williams' namesake hard by the High Rise Bridge on the road to Slidell is amere handful of dark buildings framed in wood with crumbling brick veneer. Trash blows through the dirt that passes for yards. Cars, charred beyond recognition, are a common sight. Drug dealers patrol the corners. Even the dogs look sickly.

According to the most recent census data, the typical Desire family consists of a single mother with three children and an average annual income of less than $6,000. The crime rate is high, the population is 100 percent black and the median age is about 12 years old. People who know about these things say Desire is the baddest-ass project in America, worse even than Chicago's Cabrini Green, where Hoop Dreams was shot.

Marshall Faulk, the Rams' running back was born into this squalid environment in the Ninth Ward, or as they say in the "hood," the Upper Nine. Earlier this week he was asked by an entertainment reporter where his favorite hangouts were.

"I'm from the projects," Faulk said, squinting his eyes as he seemed to weigh the irony. "My favorite parts of the town are not the places people would want to be."