A group of homeless people have built a makeshift shelter near City Square in response to a crackdown on rough sleepers and rising hostility from the public.

The group, which has set up a camp of tarps, umbrellas and cardboard boxes under a tree, said they had been the target of a tirade of abuse after media reports this week cast rough sleepers as a public menace.

Stuart Polden, 40, said he had been sleeping in the doorway of an abandoned building on Little Bourke Street for more than a year but was told by police on Thursday that he had to move on.

Mr Polden, who has been homeless for the best part of two decades, is one of about a dozen people who will bunker down in the temporary campsite tonight.