No Fixed Abode: A History of Responses to the Roofless and the Rootless in Britain

by Robert Humphreys

The plight of Britain's homeless seems strikingly similar to that of the roving vagrant and vagabond of history. Through the centuries the number of homeless people has fluctuated wildly with varying proportions of hardened petty criminals, social scroungers and bereft innocents. Emergent laws persistently repressed the alleged threats of the unruly vagrant while largely ignoring factors like economic fluctuation, bad harvests, disease and war. This book seeks to provide the foundation for an historical association of economic, social and political change, without which it is easy to seek simplistic explanations based solely on current events for the disturbing number of homeless people existing on the fringe of modern democracy.

222 pages, Hardcover

First published August 2, 1999

Reviews

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars