What about the urchins? Is there a way to REALLY help?

This boy is almost full-grown, now. I first met him when he was about 7, when he and his little "gang" wanted me to fix stolen bikes for them, so they could sell them.
Sometimes a little girl tagged along, maybe 3 or 4. I never met a single parent.
I don't know that he ever goes to school. Sometimes I'll see that he's found himself a job - it's always moms who find a little work for him - and then I'll see him in an altercation with said mom, she explaining that you have to do the work to get the money, and he trying the fast-talk that's the only communication he knows.
So the latest episode is him and a buddy, coming to my house, which is a punk/community-type house (www.clownhouse.org), looking for weed. Of course he argued when I told him he was barking up the wrong tree, and even if we HAD any, I wasn't that stupid (my naieve roommate had given him an inch, so he was helping himself to a mile), and of course I "mommed" him a bit, as that seems to be the real thing he's seeking. But he just tells people like me or the suckers who hire him what we want to hear.
Last week, he found a young hippie dude in the neighborhood, who gave him weed, and was his friend. Within days, one of his little buddies had stolen the hippie's wallet.
When my husband, Dingo the Clown, heard the kid was perping around, he gave him a severe talking to, but both of us are painfully aware that the people who are supposed to be raising him are training him to rot in jail with the rest of the ignorant thugs. He said Dingo should be proud of him, cuz he wasn't "out claiming territory."
We subtly push him toward male role models he might respond to, but honestly, the urchin-to-mentor ratio really sucks, and I feel I live in a pretty hip and aware community.
No one wants to write someone off, especially a kid. But he's big enough now that the cute factor is wearing off, and he pretty much looks like a lost cause. He's certainly burnt all his bridges with me.