I recently spent 2 days working on a renovation project at a local slum here in Hungary. The slum is a couple hundred gipsy families, living in unfinished/abandoned houses without water, gas/heating, they steal electricity off the grid. This was during the winter, so most houses just had one heated room, using wood. The houses didn't have bathrooms, everything smelled of urine, thrash was left all over the place, inside, outside, everywhere. Since the locals steal from each other, there were very few movable/valuable objects, like tables or chairs. Interestingly though, most houses had an LCD TV, which was surreal, poeple living in quasi-homeless conditions but watching TV all day. Many families had 5-10 kids, possibly because of lack of protection and because wellfare is linear in the # of kids here. Many kids were at home all day sitting around in dirty clothes. I heard one father argue with a kid and threaten him with school as punishment. According to locals drugs are a huge problem, with most teenagers having tried out drugs or being users. Adults were also at home, obviously uneducated and unemployed, possibly without acceptable "work ethics". The experience was a bit like a post-apocalyptic movie.

One of the aid people said in an interview that to "fix" this, ie. to reintegrate this group of people into society will take 2 generations in her opinion, because the social patterns in their heads have to change (don't steal, go to school, work, keep a tidy house), and that takes time. I agree.

I don't think just money would help. After I came back the 2nd day, I tried to imagine what would happen if one of these families got a really nice house and a bunch of money to go along with it. But since they lack the social skills to handle property and a law-abiding, "civil life", I think many would gradually destroy the house, spend/lose the money, and then end back where they started.

TLDR: Ending poverty involves changing people, which takes generations.

This is the project:

http://www.bagazs.org/en/

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An interesting (perhaps) afterthought I had after the renovation work was whether trying to change people (the gipsies in Hungary) is moral. As a group I believe gipsies have always lived a different life, navigating at the edge of society, living in their own communities. Maybe it's just us who should change and just accept that they want to live a different life? I don't know, this line of thinking reminds me of Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, where the author argues that perhaps our way of life is only special because it's aggressive, in that we annihilate or assimilate other cultures and cannot live alongside them.