I did the same thing with Sims 1. In fact, it's pretty much the only thing I did in Sims 1. I was doing a lot of research on homeless-issues at the time, so it seemed natural to want to make a Sims homeless encampment.

I only play any of The Sims for two reasons:
1) To build wacky architectural nightmares and Escherian conundrums
2) To play unique (and often ethically questionable) experiments on the people (sometimes animals).

I think this blog is fantastic and and it is inspiring me to pick up Sims3..

Also the bit about the teddy bear when she was a kid, and again when the teddy could no longer comfort here almost made me cry. Fortunately Kev's exploits generally amuse me and so I felt better. But that poor teddy..

I used to make experiments where I would stick a really poor, dirty (effectively homeless) sim next to a wealth, irritating, holier-than-thou sim and try to get them to fall in love. It worked about as well as it would in real life, but the results were always quite funny, especially in SIms2 when their personalities were better developed.
My favorite was when the homeless sim would try to bath on the hot tun because it was accessible outdoors and one time he caught the hot tub on fire (somehow).