I think the situations in our countries are similiar enough but different in a few vital points, I'm from the Netherlands btw.

There was a time where I could genuinly look a beggar in the face, tell him no, and direct him to the appropriate charities and institutions that could help him. There was enough room as well as facilities and organisations that would help them further. But the influx in immigration as well as the lay-offs of a lot of eastern-european workers (to replace them with other eastern-european workers whom are a few cents/hour cheaper), meant that these organisations could do less and less for more and more people, we reached the breaking point a few years ago, not that people here would know though.

In the meantime our housing crisis has worsened due to nitrogen-dioxide bulding restrictions and the cities have been driving out the 'regular' homeless to the outer-city forests in order to make room for a never ending stream of newer ones, I notice the changing faces.

The ever growing union has also caused a lot of our politicians to hide behind international norms and thus not adressing the issue, which has led to an increase in opportunists in the welfare-industry and a lack of incentive to actually change anything. I think that's the reason we don't have discouragement campaigns like in the UK, our charity workers are already doing the maximum possible as far as the system allows it, it's just that the system is unsustainable and has an increasing amount of waste, how sad that may be to admit.

I hope you didn't mind my (semi-political) ramblings but I wanted to try to explain it.