ABSTRACT
In the late 1940s, London local government was confronted with a social problem that had not been coherently addressed in the package of welfare state legislation enacted after the war. The post-war housing shortage dramatically increased the number of homeless families and individuals in London, and providing temporary accommodation for them posed new and unwelcome diffi culties for the London County Council (LCC) and the National Assistance Board (NAB, or Board). The LCC’s and NAB’s responsibility for temporary accommodation in London lasted only until 1965, when major organizational changes took effect in both local and central government.1 But the approach to homelessness adopted by the LCC and NAB, typifi ed by retrenchment, set the tone for social policy in this area into the 1970s.
