ABSTRACT
This chapter traces legislative responses to vagrancy and homelessness, from medieval to contemporary times. Legislation often outlives the original context within which it was drafted and developed, and this is nowhere more true than in the case of vagrancy and homelessness. The early sixteenth century is notable for two developments in the vagrancy legislation: levels of punishment were briefly reduced during the period 1503-30, and the condition of vagrancy became more clearly criminalised, as distinct from being understood as a rather undifferentiated social problem. Despite modern representations of homelessness as an urban phenomenon, historically much vagrancy has either been located in rural areas, or else has had its economic origins in rural impoverishment. The journey from vagabondage to homelessness is a long one, beginning with medieval regulation of 'idle and valiant' beggars, and ending in the late twentieth century with conflicting welfare and criminal justice discourses on the nature of homelessness.
