Greentext

There is nothing inherently soul-crushing about concrete architecture. Some of the most vibrant neighborhoods in the world (especially in tropical/storm-prone regions) are made from concrete. For example

Also, in construction there is a saying: fast, cheap, good. Pick two.

Government-constructed housing will always strive to be cheap. Neither autocrats nor voting tax payers want to spend more money than they have to on any given project. This doesn't mean that they are always going to go with the absoulute cheapest option - but it does mean that there will always be a price constraint. And this is very legitimate, as any money spent on housing people is money not spent somewhere else - eg, replacing old sewer pipes, funding scientific research, health care, etc.

Meanwhile, you want housing for people now. Ie, fast.

And therefore, you are sacrificing "good". And the least essential part of "good" is aesthetics.

Demanding perfection is the surest path to failure due to analysis paralysis. This is essentially your tactic here - saying "I want X, and Y, and Z, and everything else is TERRIBLE." A far better tactic is to say "what would be pretty good?", and do that. Then once you have something that is pretty good, you say "okay, how can we make it better?"

not reaffirm the class and poverty of those who live in it

This will likely be quite difficult. Social strata try to distunguish themselves over time, and one of the ways they do this is via their housing - how it looks, where it is, the amenities it provides, etc. If you build government housing out of brick, in 10 years the middle class will be building with wood.