[iguy]

And, food was expensive, it cost a majority of most people's income.

While today it costs next to nothing for us to feed the homeless, then it would have been almost as expensive as hiring them.

[jacobush]

To not speak of to cloth them. Functional clothing was very expensive.

[pmontra]

If you go south (close to equator) food grows everywhere and there is little or no need for clothing. As somebody told me in Polynesia "you guys in Europe survive, we live".

[iguy]

Indeed.

Although if food grows easily, you might expect the number of humans around to grow to catch up with it... and this mostly didn't happen (in the pre-industrial world) not because there wasn't enough time (exponentials are fast!) but because it ran into other limits, like disease.