I've always seen some - my home town centre usually has 3-5 hanging about with bedding in doorways, etc. and I see easily a dozen while out when I lived in London, elsewhere not seen them quite as much though. I can't say around here I've seen much change maybe a slight increase under the current Tory government but not massively so.
I'd say probably only 20-30% are genuinely disadvantaged and in need of help getting back on their feet though - a certain percentage are there by choice - some of them running scams - and some people just end up back there no matter how much help they get.
If you genuinely want to help then there are several charities that deal with them who always need people and/or while easier said than done the best thing is to get talking to them see what they need - the genuine ones mostly don't mind the company and will appreciate things like food, etc. rather than necessarily money, those desperate for money probably have some pretty serious drug addictions.
I can help people via charity but when you see them on the street I feel a little bad and its very unlikely you will have food on you to give, also should the police and each council not be doing more to help people.
Like yesterday I was out of town and one short stretch of road I had seen 5, 4 of which had been in middle of the road next to the tragic lights, on the centre crossing or the edge of the road the last one was the only one that was not, he was sitting near a busy are not far from a restaurant.
councils already help with housing and give Jobseeker’s Allowance, why are they not able to help the homeless ???
nearly all town/city have empty buildings owned buy the gov, or buildings that have been left empty for ages which can easily be changed to some homeless centre, to give people a place to eat and sleep instead of the streets and im sure people would volunteer, even if not the unemployed could be asked to volunteer.
I'm sure the council could spare 1 or 2 members of staff to handle the homeless issue, sometime it seams to me the council staff could care less about others.
I think a lot more could be done to handle the problems if they really wanted to.
The people that are not homeless the police should already be aware of who they are and should do more to get them off and charged with fines or prison time.