I'm sorry Oyahoco, but I'd have to disagree with your observation.
Certainly, as Gandhi pointed out, the lower classes are often cleaner than those above them; those classes were accustomed to cleaning, as was often their vocation. That is certainly a clever and insightful observation for his purposes and quite relevant, regardless. The West--the US in particular--is not well adapted to extreme poverty, and it makes being homeless a bit more unsavory than in other, more poor, countries, where a greater portion of the population finds themselves in such circumstances and tend to adapt as a larger community and in a more organically malleable environment.
I've worked jobs where I would literally have to scrub 'til I I bleed and bankrupt myself over the heating bill to get adequately clean. Working strenuously with heavy equipment, outdoors in very dirty places will do that. I can't imagine train-hopping and scavenging for food would be much different. I've lived outdoors for long stretches of time with no running water (no, not even a river, believe it or not), you get dirty, but you don't take cleanliness for granted; you yearn for it, you seek it out, and if you revel in your dirtiness, it's not because you want to but have to. I've lived in many countries and seen a good cross-section of life the US, and it's not the dirt that calls my attention but what seems shine through despite the dirt. I live very cleanly and somewhat privileged and strive for a similar level of creativity and lust for life, yet I must still pay homage.
What I find significant about these photos is the fact that they seem to be living the way most of us are "too busy" or "too needy" or "too attached" to live. This is not an easy way to live, though the more deviant among the middle-class may fancy themselves as quite capable and--considering that they do not choose to live as such--somehow above or beyond it. Perhaps it's resentment that drives us to feel this way, resentment for the creative liberty and adventurousness that these photos portray. Did you know that one could easily be thrown from a train and killed on a switch-track? These pictures don't show such things, but they are implied for anyone familiar with train-hopping. Perhaps the greatest transgression in these photos is the fact that we can see them from the comforts of our own homes.
Our subcultures today are so far removed from those of the beats or the punks or the hippies that we must either grasp for these extremes or other similarly wild possibilities of life or stagnate in the void of cynicism and post-modernity. This subject demands much more clarification than a few posts, but I had not anticipated such a response. It's not that I'm so much offended by it, as it is that I feel my experiences, my interests, and the life that I've pursued to be incomparable to most of those whom I encounter. I do feel this to be somewhat class-based, but really, it's much more universal than that.