This seems very disconnected from reality to me. Romanticization of the poor as some sort of noble, underprivileged class, yearning for the opportunity to bring humanity back to the world is a very common narrative sold by people who are usually just trying to make themselves feel better about something. The truth is that poverty tends to just harden people to the world. You see much less empathy in impoverished communities, poverty is more likely to make you care less about other people, not more, and much more likely to end up victimizing other people, usually other poor people. That’s why our poor communities have such wide spread problems with violence and property crimes. Telling lovely made up stories about what it’s like to be poor might make you feel better, but it’s not helping anybody, and it’s certainly not accurate.
I don't think it's disconnected from reality at all. This kind of "underprivileged class" description echoes my experience, but my experience was largely rural poverty rather than urban.
In our case we got to know our neighbours better because we'd borrow things from one another, my parents couldn't afford childcare so I stayed with those same neighbours after school.
Now I live in a city the poorer areas are much closer to what you describe.
Such an experience is very atypical, regardless of rural or urban setting. Poor rural communities are just as likely as urban communities (if not more likely) to have issues with substance abuse, violence and family harm. Poverty tends to take your childhood away from you, but good parents can overcome that and bring some reasonable level of stability to the home. But this is absolutely not the norm in poor communities. It sounds like you grew up with two parents, who weren’t neglectful? Well that essentially puts you amongst an elite group in a poor community. Most poor children don’t have two parents, and don’t have any reasonable level of stability at home. If your parents also managed to avoid abusing you, or exposing you at a harmful level of substance abuse, then you would have most certainly had a better childhood experience than the majority of your socio-economic peers.
My rural experience (UK) may be different from what you're expecting if you're taking an americentric viewpoint. I had one neglectful parent who later married physically abusive step-parent. I experienced physical violence and sexual abuse as a child, but my surroundings outside of the home were largely positive despite poverty.
EDIT: also some of your claims here are questionable. I don't believe that children in an average poor household experience abuse + drug usage. I knew plenty of poor children who had one parent, I knew some who had a drug user in the house and I definitely knew some who were abused but I didn't know a single person who ticked all of those boxes.
