In college I lived in a mixed income development in Atlanta that replaced Techwood Homes, a notorious project. It was pretty cool. The two-rent-level system seemed to work well. http://www.centennialplaceapartments.com/
Techwood Homes, the first public housing of that type in the US, was still there when I was at Ga Tech. For the most part there was little interaction between the residents there and Tech students, even though it was literally just across the street. Guys selling weed or a mugging now and then on that side of North Ave. was about the most that ever happened.
There was also one old Tech dorm building on that side of the street, separated from campus. On paper it was the least appealing dorm - old, poor facilities and a proximity to crime. In practice, many of the student who lived there did so by choice, as kind of a mild misfit/artistic community. People were always doing interesting things in their dormrooms there.
My mom and stepdad owned a mechanical engineering firm that did a lot of work in Atlanta housing projects. Mostly replacing old metal gaslines with plastic ones. Me, my brother, and one of my stepbrothers all worked for them at various points, so we all got a fair amount of experience in the Atlanta projects. My stepdad always made sure each crew had a couple guys from whatever project we were at, which was a good practical step. Otherwise we'd have been a bunch of white guys (mostly really redneck construction dudes) in all-black projects. We rarely had much trouble, beyond some petty theft of our tools, and one doofus on the crew who followed someone into a basement to "buy a cheap TV" and got robbed at shotgun point as a result.
I didn't do the job at Techwood, but my brother did, and one day there was a gun fight in the street. The crew all ran and hid in doorways and behind steps. My brother said he saw one of the teens who was shooting crouched behind a car door, and the guy looked at him and grinned like he was having a great time, then went back to shooting.
In retrospect, it's kinda crazy our mom let us work there, but we never really told her those kind of stories. Heh.
This was part of a HUD program called HOPE VI, which replaced really bad housing projects with townhouse-style, privately-managed, mixed-income housing. At least here in Boston it seems to have been very successful.
