I live next to a Section 8 low-income housing complex.
The big difference?
It's a cooperative, which means that the residents have an incentive to take care of their apartments and the community in general, as opposed to purely public housing projects.
Over the years there have been some issues there, but in general, the place is kept up well, there aren't major problems occurring, the management works hard to keep gangs out of the community, and those who do create problems are generally tossed out of the community in short order.