ABSTRACT
This chapter explores different perceptions of homelessness and the extent of the homelessness problem. It takes a long-term view, tracing the slow development of state intervention in homelessness, from the early days of the Poor Law through to the Homelessness Act 2002. Housing can be viewed as a continuum with outright, mortgage-free ownership at one end and sleeping rough at the other. In between is a large grey area which includes hostels, residential hotels, staying with friends and relatives, licences and insecure tenancies in the private rented sector, accommodation provided by employers, protected and assured tenancies, mortgaged accommodation, and tenancies granted by housing associations and local authorities. The National Assistance Act 1948 – an Act shaped by ‘post-war optimism’ – was a significant development in state provision for the homeless which ‘heralded the dawn of a more humane approach to the problems of vagrancy and homelessness’. State intervention to assist the poor, including the homeless, originated in the sixteenth century.
