We all agree that institutionalisation is a dirty word: nevertheless, around 80 percent of the capital's homeless in fact have psychiatric records. They would appear neither cared for, nor part of the community.

Walk down The Strand of an evening, or worse still, venture into the vicinity of Waterloo's infamous Cardboard City and the legacy of State incompetence and social rejection is all around you. Some of these people, living rough on the streets, have got drug problems. Some have got family problems. Some just never recovered from something which went wrong in their minds a long time ago.

The question arises again and again: why are these most vulnerable of people left to rot on the streets? Why aren't they given a roof over their heads at least?

I had the opportunity to ask this question of someone who ought to know when I met Patrick, a Dublin man, at a party. He works for one of the major homeless charities, he knows the score. His choice of words surprised me somewhat when he informed me that the 'homeless industry' is worth in the region of £96 million a year. Industry?

Oh yeah, it's big business, like any other charity. The main concern of his bosses, he says, is not so much to help the homeless as such, but rather to get a nice healthy slab of Government grant money and lots of lovely public donations.

SCRUB DOWN

The money don't come so easy; there are little boxes which need to be ticked to prove how helpful the charity is being. Sometimes, said Patrick, this involves hauling highly reluctant tramps off the streets and submitting them to a compulsory scrub down. Achieving this frequently involves three grown men and more than a degree of cajoling and force.

There is much heart-searching amongst the charity workers: up to what point is it humanitarian to help those who cannot or will not help themselves, and when does it become an infringement of their human rights? Moral dilemmas aside, they all know that if they want to keep their jobs, homeless people must be helped, and helped they shall be, whether they like it or not. The worst ones get sectioned (committed), drugged up, observed, and turned out once again onto the streets.

Naively, I asked him what he thought it would take to generate the political will to house the ever-growing numbers of ramshackle bundles who inhabit the streets of the city. He laughed. A hollow laugh.

"They don't want to be housed, most of them." What? Clients, as they are termed, are frequently taken to see Council and housing association properties which they could make their own, but turn down the offer. Sometimes homeless people are bribed to go and see a flat they have no intention of taking, to get those little boxes ticked off.

Why? Patrick cited the example - which he said was typical - of one man in his fifties who was taken to see a flat. He conceded that it was a nice place before involving himself in a complicated series of mathematics. He'd lose the extra benefit he gets for being homeless, there'd be bills to pay and the location was too far away from his regular begging site. Then of course he'd have all the hassle of cleaning the place to contend with, too. In the end, he decided he would rather live on the streets than be housed.

He claimed to be quite happy where he was: no responsibilities, free money from his benefit and begging, settled into a routine of sorts which for us house dwellers would represent utter insecurity. Thus the legacy of institutionalisation: the effort of self-sufficiency becomes a daunting, insurmountable burden.

STREET CRAZY

"Patrick, are you trying to tell me they like living on the streets, that they're there for the sheer fun of it all?" I asked.

Not as such. If you're female and sleep rough, rape is a routine hazard, liable to happen several times a week unless you sleep in a group of friends. Male rape is on the increase, too. Beatings and muggings from other homeless people are such a regular occupational hazard that few even bother to report these assaults. The suicide rate is ridiculously high, and the life expectancy about half that of you or I, whether through disease or violence. Oh yeah - and Gawd help you if you are black or of an ethnic minority. Even the underdog needs someone to kick.

Homelessness is not without its diversions, however. A new sport amongst the homeless consists of sneaking up on a fellow rough-sleeper as they doze and shooting them up either with an infected needle or, more commonly, a lethal dose. Murder is easy when you have no fixed abode, and there is no-one to mourn the passing of the victim.

The clever ones are the old hands, he said, the foul smelling tramps whose stench alerts you to their presence long before your eyes. They haven't just 'forgotten' to wash; they are using the skunk deterrent. Would-be assailants, rough sleepers themselves though they may well be, steer clear of the evil whiff and are less likely to sneak up in the night to assault or rob them. Equally, the police are highly reluctant to run them in and even the charity workers are less than keen to drag a professional pongo in for a scrub down and an interview.

The problem of the homeless run deep and are not resolved simply by the offer of housing, Patrick contends. What the charities rely upon is that homelessness is a problem for the wage-earning commuter. It upsets them to see all this human degradation. It isn't pretty and it engenders guilt - nice, exploitable guilt. Make a donation and assuage that guilt?

So what is needed? Another hollow laugh. Institutionalisation, that's what. Patrick envisages an impossible scenario where the homeless are compulsorily removed from the streets, placed in their own bedrooms in hostels run by psychiatric staff and carers, taught skills and employed in workshops . . . in short, placed in glamourised asylums for life.

Is that ethical, Pat?

(Laughs) "Of course not! You'd have the civil rights campaigners up in arms and Jesus, would it be open to abuse!"

Open to abuse? Same as it ever was . . .