I tried helping a poor family once, going to their home and repairing furniture.
While there one of the girls came and asked me if I had some plastic sheets to cover a window because they had just torn out the screen.
I finished up, left, and have had no interest in helping such self-destructive people again.
'Tis a huge difference between "poor" and "squalid".
I grew up poor. Didn't know it, though, because everyone else was in the same boat my family was in. :-) I'm sure that Dad would have loved some help fixing furniture; he was busy working 6 days a week, and volunteering to boot.
I commute through a lower-middle class to "poor" neighborhood on my way to work. Everything is neatly kept up, painted, trimmed, mowed, etc etc. My guess, they'd love a hand, too.
I don't commute through the "squalid" neighborhoods. 'Tisn't safe. The cops only venture through there in force.
The difference? I can think of five separate churches that I pass by on my commute, in a dozen-block radius. There are more, I'm sure, a street or two over, too. Dunno about the "squalid" neighborhood, like I said, I don't venture there often. I know there are plenty of pawn shops and liquor stores. Couple of homeless shelters, too.
Whatever you subsidize, you get more of, IMHO.