“First they sold us on tearing down public housing by promising housing vouchers. Now that there aren’t even gutted buildings to squat in, they’re taking away the vouchers.” Harold Henderson, Reader, 23 April, with news of the cuts in Section 8

I went to a lecture over the weekend — don’t remember who was lecturing, since I walked in at the very end — where the speaker declared his intention of “writing the story of public housing in Chicago as a farce.” From its initial construction, through Gautreaux, to the Plan for Transformation and its various failures, the city’s cynical weaseling and scapegoating would indeed be hilarious in satire — if only they were couched in a scenario where no one really felt any pain, and if only the whole shroud of race and class (which prevents anyone from really speaking openly about any of it) could disappear. Of course, said housing policy has caused real pain, and the wild-eyed suspiciousness of public housing residents testifies to that.