Many Democrats, including presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John Edwards, have said they would like the Bush administration to stop the demolitions. Louisiana's Democratic senator, Mary Landrieu, has also supported overhauling the redevelopment plan.

By contrast, Republicans have come out in favor of demolition. On Wednesday, Sen. David Vitter and three Republican congressman wrote a letter to a Senate committee considering the redevelopment plan, saying it needs to be left alone because overhauling it would delay and even derail redevelopment.

"Public housing in New Orleans has for many decades served almost no other purpose than to warehouse the city's poor and disenfranchised," the letter said. "That generations of our fellow citizens were allowed to live in government-operated and sanctioned slums is offensive and intolerable."