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Someone mentioned how homeless people are to americans what roma are to europeans and it stuck with me.
(hexbear.net)
Both groups elicit frothing hatred in bourgeois hateful anglos. 
Definitely true but there's a significant difference. Here in the UK for example it's definitely frowned upon to hate the homeless, everyone understands they're unlucky people. Dickens probably helped a lot there but also socialist movements the country has had.
As a result of this we have aproximately 5000-6000 rough sleepers. The US on the other hand has 550,000+ despite being only 5x larger in population they have 110x more people sleeping in the streets.
In my experience there are similar attitudes to homeless in other western-european countries. Whereas when I've visited the US it's been as OP describes, very similar attitudes to how people discuss Roma here.
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.