Soup and sympathy: Mark Gould talks to Charles Fraser, chief executive of St Mungo's | Society | The Guardian

"When I started," Fraser recalls, "most residents had personal histories - jobs, homes. Something had happened and they ended up on the streets, but in their background they had a reference point, so it was easier to pick them up and help them back into normal life. Now we have more and more people who have never had jobs, never had relationships, other than those that cause them anguish, and never had housing, so they never had those reference points. [Taking] drugs compounds that volatility."

Soup and sympathy: Mark Gould talks to Charles Fraser, chief executive of St Mungo's | Society | The Guardian