‘Archaic laws’ and the making of the homelessness sector

The relationship between law and welfare in the governing of homelessness has been studied from a range of perspectives but their interconnections have had little scrutiny at that key moment in the later 20th century when vagrancy was repealed and homelessness became a ‘sector’ in most western countries. Focussing on Australia, this paper provides a critical historical analysis of how and why these interconnections limited reform. Despite the early 1970s being the highpoint of social democratic idealism, the new homelessness sector redeployed the methods of residual charity, largely because it was seen as a replacement for jail. The legal reforms were partial and, since their focus was limited to homeless white men, they had unintended consequences, tragically so for Indigenous peoples. While these shifts represented a turning point in the long governance of homelessness, they were ones in which old ways prevailed and, as neoliberalism gained ground, they became embedded in the policy landscape.