There are the house people, and then there are the alley people.

Swiftly gentrifying Capitol Hill belongs to the former — with gleaming cream paint, crisp repointed brick and varnished doors of fine wood. But the maze of alleys, home to a minority of Hill residents, has been forgotten after decades of systematic destruction.

The errors that reformers make in search of social progress are not minor, they are enormous, and they last long. One such was the 1934 Alley Dwelling Elimination Act. Meant to end squalid slums, it turned the alleys into wastelands and fostered crime. It led directly to public housing and “the projects” that still haunt this city today.

The Hill’s alley dwellers are finally determined to do something about it. Here’s Will Fleishell, the artist who helped restore the city’s cast-iron call boxes into historic artworks: “The city has ignored the alleys. Repairs are not done; parking prohibitions are not enforced. Alley dwellers get no snow removal, no city garbage cans.” Needless to say, Fleishell lives on one of the Hill’s most famous alleys, Archibald Walk at 6th and E streets S.E.

He and two other alley dwellers, Mark Nevitt and Steve Pinkus, a transportation planner, have formed an activist group, the District Alley Dwellers Alliance, to lobby for the alleys. First fruits: after extensive phoning, letter writing and testimony at Public Works hearings chaired by Councilwoman Carol Schwartz (R-At large) last April, Brown’s Court, between 6th and 7th streets S.E. was scheduled for repaving.

“All we want is equal city services to those the house owners have,” says Nevitt, a Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps lawyer.

A history of unintended consequences lies in the background. A century ago, the alleys were filled with people. Pierre L’Enfant envisioned them as the logical location for servants’ quarters, shops, restaurants, stables, small manufactories.

But by the ’20s and ’30s the alleys had become unsanitary slum housing, often served only by a common water pump and sewers that can still be seen today running down the middle. Reformers did their thing, and the 1934 alley act was passed, banning new alley dwellings. Thousands were torn down, and zoning prohibited building new dwellings. That outworn law is still in force, prohibiting building anything but small, uninhabitable garages behind row houses.

For decades the empty alleys of the Hill were fearful places, the scenes of muggings, drug deals, flight from the law. But now they are seen as highly desirable places to live, and those buildings not condemned and torn down are highly sought after.

Now, with pressure building to provide housing for middle-income and first-job residents, is it not the perfect moment to lift the failed and incongruous prohibitions on alley living? The benefits of being able to build small flats above the thousands of garages would not only people the alleys once more but also provide relatively cheap quarters for starter households.

Call it a gimmick if you will, but the downtown Golden Triangle Business Improvement District (BID) has installed wireless Internet access in public parks and plans to expand the program in the near future.

The process involves placing small wireless antennae with a precise range in the park so that users can sit on benches or on the grass and work. So far, the area covered is limited to Farragut Square at Connecticut Avenue and K Street N.W.

The objective, according to BID officials, is to get more people into the park and add another attraction. But the cost, according to Washington Business Journal’s Ben Hammer, is about $25,000 per year.

The idea of providing free wireless in the parks of Capitol Hill “has not ever been on our radar screen,” said the area BID’s executive director, Patty Posner. Hill rats and residents now flock to the few businesses that offer the service — Starbucks coffee shops (all outlets), Murky Coffee at 660 Pennsylvania Avenue S.E. and R&B CoffeeHouse at 1359 H St. N.E. In addition, Union Station has free “Wi-Fi,” as it is known, and Open Park, a wireless group, has set up free Internet on the west and north gardens of the Supreme Court.

Open Park is also trying to persuade a resistant Smithsonian Institution to allow free Internet on the entire National Mall, but, according to D.C. Access official Matt Wade, Smithsonian higher-ups do not believe that the service fits their basic mission. The Mall scheme would require the use of part of a Smithsonian building for the antenna, electric power and maintenance of the signal.

“The theory is that people will come. People will come to the park, and they will come to the shops,” Wade said. “Free wireless is a coming thing for the past three or four years.”

Posner said the cost of providing park service on the Hill was prohibitive. “We have a $600,000 budget.

The Golden Triangle has $3 million. We have to concentrate on street cleaning and security.” Meanwhile downtown, the Farragut Park access may soon be extended to James Monroe Park at 20th Street, Murrow Park at 18th and H streets N.W. and Longfellow Park at 18th and M streets. The service is entered via www.gtbidwireless.com.

Little noticed beneath the roar (or snore) of the Samuel Alito hearings, Marion Barry’s deepening troubles, the desperate stadium situation and the hospital fight, Washington is offering cold cash to grandparents who so often take care of the city’s wild and unruly youths.

Of course, not all of the city’s youths are wild or unruly, but those who have lost their parents or have been abandoned by them are the personification of that dreadful euphemism “at-risk youth.” There are officially 16,700 of them in the city, though it may be an underestimate as it counts only those who are legally in the custody of grandparents, according to the senior-citizen advocacy group AARP.

Thanks to a bill signed into law by D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams (D) last week, the old folks who qualify will be paid between $800 and $1,100 per month for acting in loco parentis to each child under 18.

Of course there are catches: To qualify, grandparents must be making a gross income below twice the federal poverty level (the poverty level for a family of four is $19,350, so the cutoff would be $38,700 for the hypothetical grandparents). And the grandparents must have legal custody of the child.

Great-uncles and great-aunts are also eligible under the program, which is the first of its kind in the nation.

Compared to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families grant of approximately $235 per month, the D.C. bill is positively generous. Grandparents who now receive the grant will not lose it, and the new support is per child, not per parenting group.

Introduced by City Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp (D) and championed by Ward 4 Councilman (and mayoral candidate) Adrian Fenty (D), the legislation has clear political impact. But Fenty legislative aide William Finger warned that the program, funded at $2 million, is only a pilot and the numbers of children and grandparents now eligible are “probably much smaller than the universe” of D.C. kids being cared for by relatives.

With a strong financial incentive, it would seem that many more grandparents would now apply and the program could balloon in future years.

• Where there’s smoke: Kudos to Common Denominator newspaper editor Kathy Sinzinger, who pinions the D.C. City Council for banning smoking in D.C. bars and restaurants while blandly expecting to reap $68 million from additional D.C. cigarette taxes (to go from $1 to $1.50 per pack) for school renovation funds. “What were they thinking?” Sinzinger wonders, chuckling. ...

• Barry Watch: Can former Mayor Marion Barry’s woes get any worse or more shaming than the latest revelation he is not yet clear of cocaine? His failure to pass a routine drug test can lead to far heavier penalties at Barry’s sentencing on tax evasion, but it also punctures his claims to be “clean and sober.”...

• Sullen silence from the developers and promoters of the Nationals’ stadium. The lineup for the City Council votes still uncertain. Some say it’s now impossible for the stadium to be built on time. More likely: a better deal will be struck for the city. And there will be baseball at RFK next season. ...

•Suddenly, The Washington Post’s editorial board has awakened to the idea that the proposed National Capital Medical Center, to be built on the bones of D.C. General Hospital here, is a $420 million deal without oversight that is deliberately avoiding the normal review process, called the certificate of need; the Post’s belated opposition, plus a local election year, could kill this project. ...

• D.C.’s tireless congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), is demanding hearings to investigate inadequate security at the Washington Navy Yard at 11th and M streets S.E., where the Navy has consolidated much of its technical staff. Norton says security officers lack proper radios and are armed with armor-piercing ammunition so powerful it’s a danger to everyone on the Hill. ...

• Quote to note: “I want to take something big that’s screwed up and fix it,” Mayor Anthony Williams said in an Associated Press interview on his past and future course this month. Clearly, Williams must feel he’s done the job with the District. ...

• Not exactly new on 8th: Robert Ramsay’s World Cuisine is reopening its second-story dining room at 523 8th St. S.E. The innovative restaurateur is pushing a new and volatile mix, martinis and sushi.