THE

number of rough sleepers has risen 15 per cent in one year, with calls to do more to help them. And rightly so. More than a quarter of these ‘homeless’ people are from Eastern Europe, like my local ‘rough sleeper’. He turns out, in fact, to be three different, well-fed, young Romanian men doing a four-hour shift each, occupying in turn a spot opposite the railway station and next to the cash machine. They arrive at 9 am, and leave as darkness falls. Homeless? I don’t think so.