they lived in a straw hut
because they poor
Peasants and serfs
The Chinese people who were wealthy in the Middle Ages wore robes made of silk. The poor wore clothes that they made out of hemp.
serfs
They were poor. They were probably the hardest working class of people in the middle ages, but they were also the poorest.
Cooked, farmed, served, and worked
Poor people far outnumbered middle class in the Middle Ages. The serfs and other peasants were the great majority of the population, and the Middle Class was very small. So there were more cottages for poor people than middle class houses.
in the middle ages there were rich and poor knights
Medieval houses had windows. Rich people had glass in their windows, which poor people often did not.
I am not sure the Church was "hard" during the Middle Ages. The Church spent a lot of energy providing for the sick and poor, giving people refuge, representing the needs of the poor to the kings, and protecting people. There is a link below to a related question, "What was the role of the Church in the Middle Ages?"
I looked this up and the earliest reference I could find for the "poor house" was in the 1800's and this well past the middle ages. They were also called poor farms and I found out that people were auctioned off to another person for a year or so to work for the person in exchange for rent. Again, though, this was in the 1800's. So, if you were poor ( most people were very poor in the middle ages) there was no place for you to go to. To have a "poor house" there has to be social services and a thinking that people need to be helped in someway. The society of the middle ages was feudal which meant that 90% of the people were peasant or serf and had to work for a place to live.
people where quite tolerant because they didn't no any different you where poor you had to live with itthe only people that must not have been tolerant where bad people and protesters which use to get killed if they didn't agree with the king.