history of homelessness
Homelessness has been a problem in this country since as far back as the 7th century. The kings would pass laws to punish vagrants. William the Conqueror forbade anyone to leave the land where he worked and Edward the First ordered weekly searches to round up all vagrants. Ever since then the number of homeless still rises and falls.
It has been recognised that In England in the sixteenth century possible estimates of around 20,000 vagrants were made. They first tried to give shelter to vagrants, by introducing bridewells this would attempt to train them for a profession, they were in reality dirty and brutal places. In the eighteenth century, bridewells were replaced by workhouses, they were mainly used for orphans and vagrants and would be a nightmare never to revisit. These were intended to discourage too much reliance on the government, they were unsanitary, uncaring, spartan places with meager food and sparse furnishings. Its inmates often fell ill or died of starvation and even crueler regimes. These were later replaced by dormitory housing ("spikes"). By the 1930s in England, there were around 30,000 people living in these facilities. George Orwell stayed in them while researching poverty in Britain back in the 1960s.
It was in the 1960s that the nature and problem of homelessness changed for the worse in England, with public concern growing. From a post-war low of people found sleeping rough in London in 1949, the number of people had risen to more than 1,000. untill the Conservative administration's Rough Sleeper Initiative, though the government no longer ran hostels, it did set up programmes to fund hostels and other services. Now the number of people sleeping rough in London has fallen from over 1,000 in 1990 to less than 200 in 2006.
In general, in most countries, many towns and cities had an area which contained the poor, such as a " skid row ". In New York City, there was an area known as "The Bowery ", traditionally, where alcoholics were to be found sleeping on the streets, bottle in hand. This resulted in rescue missions, such as the oldest homeless shelter in New York City, The Bowery Mission.
In smaller towns, there were hobos, who temporarily lived near train tracks and hopped onto trains to various destinations. Especially following the American Civil War, a large number of homeless men formed part of a counterculture known as "hobohemia" all over America.
Modern homelessness as we know it, started as a result of the economic stresses in society, reduction in the availability of affordable housing, also property prices and neighborhood pressure increased to move these people out of their areas, putting most of their residents on the streets.
Other populations were mixed in later, such as those with mental health problems, addictions, the elderly, and others.
Many homeless kept all their possessions with them since they had no access to storage. There was also the reality of the bag people and the shopping trolly, people. They carried all their possessions around with them. If they had no access to or capability to get to a shelter and possible bathing, or access to toilets and laundry facilities, their hygiene was lacking. This created social tensions in public places. These conditions created an upsurge in tuberculosis and other diseases in urban areas.
Several organisations in some cities, such as New York and Boston, tried to be inventive about help to the swelling number of homeless people. In New York City, for example, in 1989, the first street newspaper was created called "Street News" which put some homeless to work, some writing, producing, and mostly selling the paper on streets and trains. In 1991, in England, the street newspaper, following on the New York model was established, called "The Big Issue" and was published weekly. Its circulation grew to 300,000. Chicago has "StreetWise" which has the largest circulation of its kind in the United States. Boston has a "Spare Change" newspaper built on the same model as the others: homeless helping themselves. More recently, "Street Sense", in Washington, D.C. has gained a lot of popularity and these papers have helped many people make the move out of homelessness.