BELFAST'S Ormeau Road has become a busy thriving thoroughfare, with a proliferation of restaurants and cafés heralding an increasing gentrification in what, for generations, had been a solidly working class neighbourhood.
In stark contrast to the daily hustle and bustle of café culture, are the rolled-up sleeping bags, stowed carefully as far out of the elements as possible.
One of the city's few remaining working telephone box has become a semi-permanent storage space for a bundle of bedding, while others have been placed under trees in church grounds.
At night they bed down in doorways and under tree cover.
Rev Morris Gault, minister at Cooke Centenary Presbyterian Church, says he has been discussing with other members of the Ballynafeigh Clerical Fellowship what help can be given to the rough sleepers.
"We have experienced some homeless people sleeping in our grounds," he said.
"It's been going on for quite a while and been particularly bad from the spring of this year."
Rev Gault said they appear to be younger people coming on to the street.
"Unfortunately we've had difficulties with drug use and so on. We have been trying to work with police and the Welcome Centre, but some of the guys just don't want to go into hostels because they say they have had their stuff stolen or been beaten up."
However, he says, long-term, sleeping in the grounds of the church is just not a solution.
"With the amount of children around our church, with (Girl) Guides and Brownies and other youth organisations, it's not safe with needles and empty bottles.
"They have also been defacating in church ground. We have a duty of care to the people using our hall, for their health and safety."
He said they have been trying to offer other, practical help.
"We do offer a community lunch on a Thursday and we ask people to come in, but they don't want to do that. We've been giving out hampers of food, but if they don't have an address or a place to cook the food it's not much help.
"We did for a time hand out vouchers but we discovered a Dunnes voucher was being sold for a fiver for drugs."
Donna Connor of `Hope Outreach for the Homeless' co-ordinates teams who work nightly on the streets, says they always advise against giving money to rough sleepers.
"We always advise don't give them money because you don't know if you're finding an addiction and if you're feeding that addiction not them.
"That couple of pound could be their last fix on this earth."
Mrs Connor and her husband Jim were both homeless - although not street sleepers - for a period following the breakdown of their previous marriages and she said often many things have combined for people to end up on the streets.
"Where there is substance abuse there is an awful lot of interlocking issues - addiction to drugs and alcohol, family breakdown, mental health issues - we are seeing quite a lot of mental health issues at the moment and we need to get services in place to address these issues.
"Unfortunately because we don't have a government there is no chance of that happening."
South Belfast assembly member Claire Hanna agrees that "in the absence of an assembly these issues are not being addressed", and suggested "complications in the benefits system" could be adding to the problem.
"There's certainly more visible homelessness now (on Ormeau Road)," she said.
"Reasons are complex, including substance abuse and mental ill health, and these are problems that need to be addressed with a more comprehensive model of support for these vulnerable groups.
"A model similar to that used by the Probation Board where they provide support and mentoring for people leaving prison could be the type of thing that could mean the difference between someone keeping a home and living on the streets."
