In my experience, poverty often goes along with a sense that life is overwhelming and out of control. The people I know who have slid into poverty expend all their energy on survival and on distracting themselves from their problems (often in ways that lead to yet further problems). They have no strength left for gardening. I am not sure what is the ratio of cause to effect here; I suspect that a sort of psychological weakness comes first, but then poverty is extremely stressful in itself. What is clear to me is that the difference between me and those who have slid down into squalor is psychological. I have energy that they lack. I have never heard any of the poor people I know express any sort of leftist political sentiment or blame their problems on the rich, except in a vague, griping way. A sense of entitlement, in my experience, is something rich people have much more of.

Complaints that the quarters of the poor are dirty and ill-kept are as old as civilization—have a look at Tacitus, for example—so public housing is obviously not the cause of this behavior. It springs from the same cause as much poverty, an inability to cope with the rigors of life.