Adrian spends his days begging for food and spare change at the Five Cross Roads Shopping Centre.

In 2014, public angst about Hamilton's homeless population prompted the city council to impose a bylaw designed to make people "feel safer". At the same time, a housing-first initiative was launched, with grand plans to eliminate homelessness. Three years on, there's a notable absence of vagrants in the city. Some have been housed, some have moved cities, and some, have moved to the suburbs.

There are dry spots behind a set of shops at Hamilton's Five Cross Roads Shopping Centre.

Adrian knows about those spots. He stashes his checked wool blanket behind a bin at the back of the bakery.

DOMINICO ZAPATA/STUFF. Wiremu came down from Auckland to live on Hamilton's streets - these days, he's in Enderley.

It's not daylight yet, but he needs to be gone before the shop workers turn up. They might call the cops if they spot him sleeping there.

He uses the toilet across the road at the Z Five Cross Roads and splashes some water on his face.

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DOMINICO ZAPATA/STUFF. Hamilton Christian Night Shelter manager Peter Humphreys says homelessness is an ongoing problem in Hamilton.

Adrian wonders if he'll eat today, although food is not his priority.

He grips a hand-written cardboard sign and sits down outside an abandoned meat shop.

"Hello, any spare food or change please?

Currently homeless

​Looking odd jobs/work

​Lawns, gardens, windows etc'"

A few hours of begging will get him $30 to buy a gram of synthetic drugs.

For the next 12 hours, getting high will be Adrian's sole motivation.

He doesn't get as much as he did in the city centre, but it's difficult to beg in town nowadays.

He's had long stints at the night shelter and has slept in the entranceway of most shops.

He even boarded with others in a flat, something he says was possible because of the People's Project.

But "it wasn't my fit".

A former concreter, Adrian has been on the streets since he lost his job nine years ago.

His partner lives in Nawton with her children, but their home is not an option.

"Their addictions cross with my addictions.

"Mine is synthetics and theirs is alcohol."

Rough sleeping is what you make of it, Adrian says.

He sleeps on the street, in car parks and behind buildings - anywhere dry. And these days, it's mainly in Enderley.

More shoppers arrive and Adrian displays his sign more prominently.

He's jovial and very much the talker.

"Synthetic weed is on the black market now. You can purchase it around here or get it delivered.

"It's quicker and the hit is instant.

"The people here are friendlier than in town."

By town, he means Hamilton's city centre, 4km away.

Wiremu has been homeless for nine months.

The streets can be lonely, he says.

He usually passes the time by reading. He has one book: The Book Thief.

It's in his backpack, along with a watch and a change of dry clothes. But he's not sure where the backpack is.

He stashed it behind the Work and Income office in a spot he thought was safe.

Wiremu's a bit more shy about begging and prefers to receive food.

He tucks into the latest donations - two steak and cheese pies and a sandwich.

It's his first feed for the week - and maybe his last.

Like Adrian, Wiremu wakes before dawn.

But unlike Adrian, Wiremu has family he could stay with.

He has a sister and two sons in Te Awamutu, but he doesn't want to be a burden.

He worked at a plastics factory in Christchurch for 15 years before moving to the North Island.

Wiremu is a drifter and spent time on the streets in Auckland. He's not sure what his next step will be, but for now, he's content with a full stomach.

Adrian and Wiremu are newcomers to Enderley and they're not alone.

The small tribe of homeless can be seen carting blankets in tattered bags which they rest on pavements outside the suburban shops.

They've drifted in as a result of a council crackdown on begging and nuisance behaviour in the city centre.

Earlier this year, former prime minister Bill English pointed to Hamilton as an example of a city that had almost eliminated homelessness.

His comments were in reference to the People's Project, an initiative launched in response to the central city's vagrant population.

The project targeted the chronically homeless - people who have lived on the streets for a year or more.

The People's Project is a community collaboration that includes Hamilton City Council, New Zealand Police, Ministry of Social Development, Child, Youth and Family, Housing New Zealand, Department of Corrections, Waikato District Health Board, Midlands Health Hamilton Central Business Association, Te Puni Kokiri and Wise Group.

Other cities took notice and in Auckland, similar measures housed 150 people in four months.

People's Project leader Julie Nelson, from Wise Group, says the city was at an all-time low before her team stepped in.

She says people were sleeping rough in doorways and businesses were hiring private security guards to walk people from their offices to their cars because they felt unsafe.

In the same year the project was launched, a campground in Hamilton East was sold to a private developer.

The sale left 40 people with nowhere to go, so she and a few others made sure they wouldn't end up homeless.

The initial conversations included mental health service providers and former mayor Julie Hardaker.

The project's success is due to its collaboration with other wrap-around services.

The project's Hamilton manager, Kerry Hawkes, says project staff have put more work into sustaining tenancies over the past three years.

It's something she says needs to be done because if the support is not there and tenants lose their homes, the work was for nothing.

"Often these people don't have support and we become that enduring person, because there's a real distrust with agencies."

Nelson says the way to end homelessness is to first get people into homes and then look at the services they need to remain well and housed.

Feeding people on the street is a temporary solution that Nelson and her team do not encourage.

Nelson says the research data tell you it costs the government $65,000 annually for a homeless person on the streets.

Since 2014, the project has homed 778 people, including 78 of the core group of 80 chronically homeless, a number gathered by a "variety of services", Nelson says.

But the number of chronically homeless is fiercely disputed by Hamilton Christian Night Shelter manager Peter Humphreys.

He says there are between eight and 15 rough sleepers in Hamilton and that's how it's been since 2008.

There's a police study that keeps getting mooted, Humphreys says.

The study was about regulating the area round the Riff Raff statue on Victoria Street.

"There were 72 people identified hanging around the city, but only six of them were homeless at that time," Humphreys says.

"Those numbers have somehow changed to 80 - there've never been 80 rough sleepers."

Humphreys' shelter is on Anglesea Street.

The beds in the shelter are tiny.

They belonged to little girls from a Catholic school.

So if there's a big chap, Humphreys will push two beds together.

There's a bike rack and an outdoor area in the front of the shelter facing the road.

Clean clothes hang on the line and a shoe rack holds a dozen pairs of trainers.

The shelter - which doesn't receive central government funding - has 25 beds for men and nine for women.

The men's beds have been at full capacity in the past few months, and for the first time, Humphreys has had to turn people away.

Several of the men at the shelter have addiction problems.

They can't stay if they're drunk or high, but Humphreys is aware that use of synthetic drugs - synnies, as they're known on the streets - is rife among the homeless.

Humphreys can tell you stories of Hamilton's most marginalised - nearly nine years' worth.

"I had one chap that fell into the river and drowned," he said. "You don't hear of these stories.

"His body was in the morgue for two weeks before his family came down to claim him.

"I went to his funeral. He was subsidising his addiction to synnies by begging."

He's heard of the groups of homeless who are frequenting the Five Cross Roads Shopping Centre in Enderley.

"People will just move around. So if they're there, it's probably the safest place for them to go to."

He visited the groups and identified a few people.

He's not sure how many are actually homeless. It's possible some have gathered to be social, or are there to beg.

Humphreys says he doesn't agree with giving money to beggars - homeless or otherwise - but says the homeless have just as much right to be in the city as everyone else.

"People are always spouting off about housing first because it's been an example in Hamilton, but in reality, there's a stage before that."

There are three things that need to happen: an increase in social housing, making sure housing is affordable and providing social assistance for those at risk.

"Housing first is not the first response. They say it is, but it's not," Humphreys says.

"It should be about stopping people becoming homeless in the first place.

"You can see the example of Auckland, where they don't have a night shelter.

"The last street count was between 170 and 200 people sleeping within three kilometres of the Sky Tower.

"We're not here to keep people for a long time, but that's what's happening, because there's nowhere for them to go."

Recent international research by Yale University suggests New Zealand has some of the worst rates of homelessness in the developed world.

At the last census in 2013, there were roughly 41,705 Kiwis who were "severely housing deprived" - about 1 per cent of the population.

The Yale study has compared the statistics to those from other developed nations, which put New Zealand on top of the list on a per-capita basis - but it admitted there were differing ways in which each country measured homelessness.

In 2014, Hamilton City Council passed the Hamilton Safety in Public Places Bylaw - popularly known as the city safety bylaw.

Outlined in a seven-page document, the bylaw acts to protect the public from nuisance, minimise offensive behaviour in public spaces, and maintain public health and safety.

A scorecard on the bylaw's effectiveness was presented at the Hamilton City Council community meeting in September this year.

The central city feels safer and more people live and shop there, Councillor Angela O'Leary says.

In fact, people felt 20 per cent safer than they did in 2014.

The plan behind the bylaw's enforcement had two approaches: focusing on public spaces and housing homeless people through the People's Project.

"Focussing in on the project, we looked at what we could do," O'Leary says.

"It's making sure that the channels are still open and we want to make sure that they continue to do the good work that they do."

Part of the survey noted that police said there was a 36-per cent reduction in reported crime within the central city and a 43-per cent reduction in disorder crimes.

However, Waikato police crime prevention manager Inspector Kent Holdsworth says homeless were only responsible for a small portion of crime.

Their initial involvement was because residents phoned police about "the people that they could see" in the city.

"In the early conversations, we were asked about any sort of criminality that was involved," Holdsworth says.

"But to be fair, that was a really small part of it. We, like a lot of other agencies, essentially became a referral point.

"It was two-fold, to be fair. There were people who were concerned about the look and what it meant for Hamilton.

"And I guess there were a number of people concerned about the individuals and their ability to look after themselves.

"From our perspective now, the situation has significantly improved in terms of the numbers of homeless people that we see."

However, he and the local policing teams are aware of the increasing number of homeless in the suburbs, particularly in Enderley.

"We have noticed what we call displacement.

"The local policing team that works out in the community is aware and the community have, too, let us know."

In Enderley, there were reports of children begging at the shopping centre.

Holdsworth confirmed police were aware of that, but didn't have any specific details, or know whether the children were homeless or just begging.

Either way, it was a concern, he says.

The council's City Safe manager, Kelvin Powell, says homeless people from other parts of the country have been turing up in Hamilton, hoping to be helped or housed.

His team is often the first point of contact for rough sleepers.

Their job is to keep the city safe, according to the bylaw.

"If there was a large group of people blocking the footpath, we'd have discussions with them," Powell says.

"If someone's begging in which to cause alarm or distress, that is a bylaw issue.

"Early interventions create the safest environment for the people of Hamilton."

An unintended consequence of moving homeless people from the city has meant they've surfaced in the suburbs.

Rough sleepers and beggars have been spotted in Fairfield, Frankton, Melville, and Hamilton East.

But it's in Enderley where they're most noticeable.