The Housing Authority of New Orleans approved the sale or demolition nearly three-quarters of its scattered-site properties, targeting more than 500 of 700 total apartments.

HANO's one-woman board, Diane Johnson, approved the agenda item without discussion, but the written resolution noted that the jettisoned units had been inspected and "no longer meet the standards of safe, decent and sanitary housing." Since Hurricane Katrina, storm-damaged units have drawn fire for contributing to neighborhood blight problems.

"I wouldn't so much mind them tearing these down if they were building some others up," said Lillie Walker-Woodfork, a resident leader for HANO's scattered-site properties.

HUD spokeswoman Donna White said in August that HANO couldn't at that time reveal its plans but that it had specific timetables and strategies for each of its Katrina-damaged properties. Asked about the plans Wednesday, HANO general counsel Wayne Woods couldn't immediately provide details on when properties would be demolished or put up for sale.

Before Katrina, Walker-Woodfork lived in a duplex at 4807 America St. in eastern New Orleans, which -- like most of the scattered-site properties -- didn't look like a public housing apartment. Instead, it was "a house with a yard and a sidewalk," she said.

The clusters of homes and apartments in HANO's scattered-site inventory were built within the past 30 or 40 years. Ideally, scattered-site units were located in moderate-income, less segregated neighborhoods, as a counter to the sort of high-density, high-poverty complexes that housed most of the city's, and the nation's, public-housing residents.

"If a person moved to a scattered site, they were supposed to be doing a little bit better, because you paid your own light bill," Walker-Woodfork said. "It was a step up from public housing."

From there, a family might secure a Section 8 voucher for renting a private unit -- and from there, without government help, a market-rate rental or a home of their own, she said.

In New Orleans, there were only a few instances of scattered-site housing gaining a foothold in established middle-class areas.

Wednesday's decision affects a two-page list of HANO properties, most of them in low-income neighborhoods, with many others located in eastern New Orleans, which was largely developed during the years when New Orleans' scattered-site housing was created.

The list of 500 properties includes more than 50 units at HANO's Christopher Park development on the West Bank, another 50 at the Press Park development in the Desire area, dozens in Gentilly and in the Irish Channel, and hundreds in eastern sections of the city and in the Lower 9th Ward.

The targeted properties have been untouched since Katrina, despite Walker-Woodfork's personal campaign for a restoration program. For at least the past year, Walker-Woodfork has addressed the HANO board at each monthly meeting with a list of scattered-site addresses in her hand.

"Can you tell me when Imperial Drive will be rebuilt?" she would ask. And she would similarly ask for information about plans for Dale Homes, Painters-Lesseps and other residential developments in the HANO inventory.

Once, the board chair told her that she'd asked the exact same questions the previous month.

Walker-Woodfork said that she was asking the same questions because she "never got any answers."

On Wednesday, Walker-Woodfork said she and other residents had met with HANO before the board meeting and had seen the list of homes to be demolished. She was glad to at least know something about the fate of the properties, after three years of asking questions.

But she still has no repair timetable for the remaining scattered-site inventory, saying she has only heard of plans for repairs to about 40 apartments.