In my old town, a significant portion of the homeless population were homeless as a direct result of the municipal government closing a mental health facility in the early 00s. Besides the obvious moral implications of that, now you have the “upstanding” citizens reinforcing their prejudice of homelessness as a personal failing, something that happens to people because they deserve it or are wicked somehow. Not to even question the notion that a human’s right to not starve, in a society which has the means to feed everyone, need not depend on whether you want to be their friend.

I live in Europe now and while poverty still exists in my area, it does not have the same character, because there are still vestiges of social programs that will, in the last resort, keep people from the absolute destitution that exists in all major US cities, even and especially the wealthy ones.