bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
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In the Early Medieval period in England, people who had nowhere to live and no means of support were supported by their home parish - essentially, the church collected taxes (tithes) that were used, in part, to house and feed those who couldn't support themselves. Mostly this meant cripples and the elderly; A healthy person could always find some kind of work, at least for some part of the year.I think you have a very limited historical perspective. Many very big cities in Europe had sustained problems with the homeless in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries ( see History of homeless in the US, US Homelessness - History, Causes, Effects, etc.... and Homelessness in Great Britain are some examples). In the UK, the homeless are referred to as "rough sleepers". Historically, the homeless were referred to as "vagrants". Basically the official social response was to let them die.To be fair, every city probably has some homeless.Is there homelessness in Texas or Florida?
Are their high-rises built to house the homeless in Dallas or Miami?
But LA, San Francisco, and Seattle take it to a level never before seen other than a 3rd world country. It should also be noted that these 3 cities are run by very liberal governments which IMO is not a coincidence.
The idea that homelessness is on the rise due to "liberal" or "Democratic" policies is naive ideologically-driven propaganda. LA and Seattle have growing homelessness in part due to migration - other areas either directly or indirectly induce the homeless to move there. Moreover, they have more temperate climates and have more services available to the homeless.
Parish based support worked quite well in a society with little mobility, but as people became less tied to the land, the support of homeless people became a major headache. If a person lost his job, he was expected to apply to his home parish for assistance - but his birthplace would typically say he no longer lived there and was ineligible; And his current community would say that he wasn't born there and was ineligible.
The industrial revolution led to so much of this that workhouses were established - places that would give anyone food and shelter, in exchange for as much labour as they could perform. These were deliberately made as unpleasant as possible, and when profitable labour wasn't possible (and it's hard not to profit from workers you don't have to pay), workhouses would make residents do pointless work, rather than allow them to be idle.
Unemployment basically didn't exist; But poverty was rife. The introduction of unemployment benefits after WWI, and their massive expansion after WWII, finally led to poverty becoming very rare, but at the expense of being replaced by unemployment.
And then the Thatcher administration managed, by dint of an astonishing lack of compassion for anyone, to create the modern English model, in which there is both unemployment and poverty, at the same time.