Here’s a new way to make public housing that doesn’t suck. Let the poor people live in nicer neighborhoods with people who actually make money. This housing “Grand Experiment” is happening in D.C. This sounds like a good idea for either someone’s imaginary fairyland, or a new season of the Wire (the Greatest Show on Television).

Bucking national trends and citing what they call “a moral goal,” District of Columbia officials have pledged to preserve and even expand low-income housing, replacing dangerous projects with new communities that keep both poor and “work force” residents — firefighters, teachers and laborers — in the mix.

Anyway, I thought there was a whole point in working toward the American Dream. Once you make a little bit of cash, you shouldn’t have to live with the poors anymore, unless they’re your butler. Even the working class shouldn’t have to live with the real poors, especially if they’re going to be ingrateful about it.

“All the things you’re familiar with, they’re gone,” she said of her former home. “It’s all rubble now.”

“I just sit upstairs and look out the window,” she added.

Just listen to Poor Person Martha Queen. And this while the typical poor person doesn’t even have windows. Also, that’s a pretty uppity name for a poor person.

Washington’s Grand Experiment to Rehouse the Poor [The New York Times]

Nothing new about it, we know how it turns out [Prometheus 6]