The communist countries you visited likely did a good job of hiding the homelessness. It's one of the advantages of having that sort of control over your subjects.
The communist countries I visited I lived in for quite a while, and no, they didn't do a good job of it, it simply didn't exist. I would have definitely noticed. And yes, I did visit the poorer regions. Now they have homeless people though. But they're no longer communist.
Everybody had a job, everybody had a house. Maybe the job was changing the traffic lights or something similarly inefficient but you'd have a job, guaranteed.
And I know it isn't the opposite.
Now, there are tent cities along the Danube and in the corners of the railway easements. Say what you like about the wonders of capitalism and the "fact" that communism just swept the problems under the rug, but anybody who actually witnessed both knows that for the people on the very bottom, communism is far, far better. And for the people in the middle, it was about the same, albeit with fewer electronics. Of course, for people at the top, it's the same; they're just allowed to be honest about their Swiss accounts now.
I am not educated enough on the subject to know how correct he is, but it's interesting nonetheless.
It always has been a version of an oligarchy.
The same goes for those 'communist' countries out there today.
The breakup of the USSR is not a victory for anybody, really. The very presence of the USSR in the first place was a detriment to the mindshare of communism, and its breakup ensured nothing beyond the fact that Americans could say they "won" the Cold War, whatever the hell that means.
Something like the original communist ideal can be seen - as it's always been - in the spontaneous organization of maker communities and other types of community. But if real communism is ever going to appear among us hominids, it's not going to come out of a State that grants it to the masses. The masses are just going to have to make the State superfluous. And that is not going to happen any time soon, libertarian science fiction notwithstanding (I like my Vinge as well as anybody).