St. Clair Village, an almost treeless compound, is no longer a village.

The two-story brick apartment buildings that remain in the city public housing community stand in barracks-like rectangles in an isolated cul-de-sac of the larger St. Clair neighborhood. Residents must drive to buy anything, and they say bus service is sporadic to the community in the woods behind other Hilltop neighborhoods.

A fatal shooting in May and a retaliatory one in August keep alive the area's reputation for violence.

And yet most residents of St. Clair Village are "devastated" that the Pittsburgh Housing Authority is moving them out, said Cynthia Grace, president of the tenant council. One's home is home, she said, no matter what it looks like to someone else.

The community has been whittled to 131 units, down from about 900 families who lived there when she moved there in the 1970s. The housing authority in 2005 demolished more than half of the units that once stood on land that is now a fenced field.

Most remaining residents have to be out by Dec. 31, said Ms. Grace. The housing authority has obtained federal approval to demolish the buildings where they live. About 30 households remaining in buildings for which the authority awaits demolition approval have not been given a moving date, she said.

"A lot of people moved early to get something before there's nothing left," she said. Some residents in the summer vowed to fight the order, she said, but everyone now is resigned to their fate.

"A lot of people decided they don't have a fighting chance and they want to get settled before the holidays."

The housing authority "told us they were going to work with us to try to save the place, that they would downsize," said Ms. Grace. "Then they came back and said it wasn't feasible."

Spokesmen for the housing authority did not respond to calls for comment. Last summer, when its board voted to abolish St. Clair Village, the authority cited a market study that indicated it would need to make $27 million in repairs to continue operating the complex.

In recent years, St. Clair Village has been known periodically as a setting for violent episodes. Some were triggered by eruptions of a long-simmering feud of murky origins that for decades has pitted its residents against those from nearby Beltzhoover. Others were fueled by drugs.

Three weeks ago, sheriff's deputies arrested a fugitive who had been sought in the brazen slaying of a woman who was killed while visiting friends in St. Clair Village. The victim, Monnica Gay, 38, had been a witness in a homicide case involving the brother of Charles Cabiness, 26, of the North Side, who is charged with killing her on Aug. 22.

In July, Ms. Gay testified at a preliminary hearing against Mr. Cabiness' brother, Luzay Watson, who is awaiting trial for fatally shooting her brother, Davon Young, on May 14 . Ms. Gay, who had declined an offer of witness protection, was shot in the head by a man who walked up behind her on Cresswell Street -- three blocks from the scene of her brother's slaying.

Yet resident Marilyn Macklin, who teaches at a nearby preschool, said most of her neighbors have loved living in St. Clair Village. Former tenants return in droves every summer for a three-day reunion.

"It's a place where everybody knows your name," she said.

Residents said none of the shooters or victims in recent episodes were living on housing authority property at the time, although police and the county medical examiner's office would not confirm that.

Charisa Jackson, who has spent her 34 years there, said she recalls when it was less isolated and more like a village.

"We had a hair salon, a grocery store, a cleaners, a clothing store, a bakery, a bar," she said.

"I grew up here in the '60s when it was pretty," said Robert Taylor, who moved away at age 25 to raise his own family. He moved back from Beechview earlier this year to care for his father, who recently died. "It was a mixed neighborhood with plenty of things for kids. You seldom saw trash, and it was unheard of for people to be shooting."

"There are fatal shootings in a lot of neighborhoods," said Ms. Macklin's mother, Elizabeth Macklin, who on a recent day was poring over the housing authority's list of available homes elsewhere in the city.

"I've been looking for houses since August," she said. "I'm not finding anything."

She needs a place with multiple bedrooms because her daughter and grandchild live with her. It needs to be big, affordable and conducive to her daughter's commute.

"I'm looking for two to three bedrooms myself because I have 55 years worth of my parents' stuff to move," said Mr. Taylor. His brother, Bo Robinson, has to find a place, too, and they have no time for a yard sale.

The housing authority has taken residents to see other public housing communities, but there aren't as many of those options nowadays.

What once were known as "the projects" were intended to be temporary stops for young families. Those who took the next step toward home ownership left behind some neighbors whose families became generational wards of the state.

In the past 10 years, the housing authority has been integrating tenants of its complexes into scattered-site homes or privately managed communities such as Oak Hill on the border of the Hill District and Oakland. These models are more sustainable, financially and socially, authority officials have said.

Public housing in Arlington Heights was demolished in 1999. People who were displaced when properties were razed in East Liberty quickly grabbed up replacement housing or filtered out of the neighborhood. People left the Hill District, too, while replacement housing was being built there.

Ms. Grace, a children's program coordinator for an organization on the South Side, said she would like to live near her job because she doesn't have a car, and she needs a place that is handicap-accessible. But her move and the moves of many others who are raising children or grandchildren are complicated by the wrong-neighborhood syndrome that gets many young African-American people shot.

"A lot of people have teenagers and are afraid of some neighborhoods," she said. "I have an 18-year-old grandson who lives with me and I know I can't take him to Beltzhoover. I have an 11-year-old grandson, too.

"At school they all know who's from Beltzhoover and who's from St. Clair and it's OK at school, but they don't go into each other's neighborhoods."

Each household will receive one relocation check for moving expenses, said Marilyn Macklin. But families who can't find a suitable match for their current apartments will have to split up.

"The hardest part is that people who are used to being neighbors will be separated," she said.

Cynthia Brown, a resident for almost 40 years, said health problems make "packing up and having to move from place to place just too much."

"I am so upset that I didn't move out at a younger age and buy a place," she said, "because now I've got to go and I have no choice."

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