"I keep banging on about compassion and kindness on here (and elsewhere)
If one keeps alight in one's heart a spirit of love for one's fellow man and a sensitivity to suffering, one will try to do what one can, and not question the eligibility on the part of the recipients.
Some may specialise in helping animals, the Third World, the old, those in prison. No one group has priority over another, and no-one can be doing everything for everyone."

Senoufou, thank you for expressing these ideals I admire and aspire to. The drum I keep banging in this thread is that homelessness, inter alia, is a logical result of a particular social structure and can be remedied by changing it. And that the "growing fury" helps, and is intended to help, preserve that pernicious social structure.

I think that the idea of a fixed-volume pool of social service resources is another myth that serves the same purpose. Hence I have no problem with Bonzo's preferences: I think it's a dangerous fallacy to hold that a pound given here comes out of the pocket of a more deserving recipient over there.

I don't know how many times I've heard or read something like, "We have no business providing for immigrants/sending aid to Africa/giving free medical care to addicts--until we take care of our own needy/veterans/abandoned dogs, etc." The handy accessibility of this trope as a reason to do nothing should itself be grounds for skepticism.

Compared to most of the world, the per capita incomes in the US and UK are enormous. (Although the actuall figures are misleading, as they are means of highly skewed distributions.) Large enough in the US, anyway, that a conservative congress could pass a tax bill throwing away one trillion dollars in revenues and not miss it.

It's true that "no-one can be doing everything for everyone," but almost everyone together could do a great deal for almost everyone.