Held in our museum’s collection in Finsbury Park, London is a parliamentary review of the Vagrancy Act, dated to 1971. Within this document, Home Office officials and senior police officers assess the act and deem it outmoded for those times. More than 50 years later, we are assured in 2026 the Labour government will finally repeal the act. This move from the government has been met with broad approval. And so it should. After all, this is something we can all agree on; that an act passed in 1824 is no longer appropriate for our society. It should be that in 2025 we are able to summon up a bit more compassion for human suffering than our Victorian forebears. We at Museum of Homelessness have a vision of connected, compassionate communities, with enough resources to be comfortable and with a safety net for those who need it. It’s not a radical vision and it should be achievable.
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- Everything you need to know about Labour’s homelessness strategy
Unfortunately, what we have seen in the last 10 years, as we have worked front line on London’s streets and counted the deaths of people across the UK, is that no matter which government is in power, criminalisation of poverty remains a key policy priority. We, too, support the repeal of the Vagrancy Act but we are watching carefully for the powers being put into other legislation by the back door. We already see that many more homeless people’s lives are made a misery by modern legislation which allows police and councils to issue criminal behaviour orders, public space protection orders, community protection notices and dispersal notices. A new Crime and Policing Bill, focusing on respect orders, is retaining and enhancing powers around begging and trespass, as well as enhancing powers that currently exist to criminalise street activity.
In real terms, in real people’s lives, this approach to dealing with homelessness desperately fails our community. As part of our Dying Homeless Project, we documented the life of Marius Kasmocius, one of the 8,521 people we remember with love on our memorial. Marius lost his job in 2019 and his mental health deteriorated when he began sleeping rough. Our investigation found that instead of the support he so desperately needed he was issued with community protection notices for – among other things – dancing in public. He was excluded and abandoned when he most needed support. At 31 years old, Marius took his own life in woods near where he was rough sleeping.
Repealing the Vagrancy Act while ramping up other forms of criminalisation will not build the connected, compassionate communities that we need. We are disappointed that the government is targeting the symptoms of poverty while failing to address the root causes, which include the severe cuts to public services and welfare reform, dating to the coalition government. We are yet to see a convincing strategy from the Labour government, despite a multitude of evidence as to what is needed.
In September 2025, the Local Government Association published, with extreme clarity, a set of actions the government can take to resolve homelessness. Examples include increasing local housing allowance and ensuring that resources match duties in the Homelessness Reduction Act, so that councils can break free of their cycle of firefighting. What we need for 2026 and beyond is proper investment in fixing some of these issues. We also need a stepchange in how we deal with homelessness and a realisation that criminalisation doesn’t work. When people’s needs are met, society can heal. It’s really as simple as that. However, we fear we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Repealing the Vagrancy Act does not necessarily mean leaving these mistakes behind and we need politicians to go beyond symbolic gestures, roll up their sleeves and do what is necessary to fix this crisis.
