The practice of begging, sometimes called panhandling, has been practiced by the unfortunate and the needy since the dawn of human civilization. Even further, doing such in public has been a crime since the Roman Empire, and this is only one of the dozens of ways the poor and homeless have been punished and prosecuted for merely existing in extreme poverty. While the ancient world is often romanticized and thought of as a scholarly time of Greco-Roman philosophy, this was far from the truth. At its imperial height, the opulent capital city likely had over a million inhabitants, but at least 300,000 of these people lived in desperate, unforgiving poverty, often stuck between dwelling in horrific slums or sleeping on the streets. Cicero called these people the dordem urbis et faecem, or the “scum of the city." These people were rarely granted sympathy, but there was a widespread tradition of "euergetism," voluntary charity by the wealthy. This giving was often done simply to build up social status and give the appearance of higher moral standing: essentially, 4th Century virtue signaling.

The seemingly positive trajectory set by the 60s and 70s would be broken by the 1980s. With the arrival of a new decade, came the arrival of a wave of drug epidemics, as well as continuous economic uncertainty. Two factors which would combine to put more people out of homes than had been seen since the Great Depression decades earlier. From 1984 to 1987, the U.S. homeless population doubled, and in this same time, the new president Ronald Reagan would declare his own slew of programs, expanding on the “War on Drugs” declared a decade earlier by President Richard Nixon. While Nixon had made a focus out of rehabilitation of those on drugs, Reagan followed a doctrine which emphasized Law and Order, with a militarization of local police, and an expansion of possible sentences to be granted to drug offenders. While hard drug use would steadily decrease, the use of “softer” drugs such as opioids and prescription painkillers would only increase. A major focus of this program were online and televised ads warning children about the dangers of drugs, and while these programs were largely unsuccessful in curbing drug use, they would greatly change public perception. The stereotype of drug abuse being the primary driver of homelessness would be pushed hard in these advertisements, and substantially decreased public approval for welfare programs for those in dire poverty.

 In 1992, Bill Clinton would be elected with a campaign promise to “End Welfare as we Know It,” he would carry through this promise in 1996, substantially scaling back LBJ’s war on Poverty initiatives. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act drastically decreased the number of recipients of federal welfare. It required any recepients of welfare to actively be working a job or in higher education. Despite decreasing unemployment, it is often believed to have contributed to the 2008 recession due to decreasing the spending power of low income households. 

In the 2010s, the housing bubble would burst, collapsing the housing market and drastically increasing the cost of living. Around the same time, opioid abuse would increase drastically, with a new drug epidemic causing homelessness to skyrocket rapidly. In 2019, approximately 25% of homeless people identified drug use as a cause of their homelessness, with opioids and opiates being the leading category of drugs.