I volunteer with homeless communities in the area. It's a complicated problem.
Everyone can still be moved on or arrested under all sorts of acts, by both the council and police for antisocial behavior, obstruction, or causing local nuisance.
They can no longer be moved on or criminalized for simply being homeless people that society doesn't want to see.
This was never a solution because you are just moving the problems around and disrupting the work done to help get the genuinely homeless back into society and stop them dying on the streets during winter and heatwaves.
Decriminalizing homelessness has not lead to this. Giving people criminal records for having nowhere left to sleep or go, is just punishing need and poverty, and makes it harder for people to rejoin society when they've fallen out of it.
This group are professional beggars who come for the opportunities that
crowded city streets offer, which vary from from begging, recycling unwanted goods, to pick pocketing, shop lifting, and crime.
TBF the majority don't come to the street kitchens, day centers, or respite activities and opportunities for the homeless, because they're more than capable of looking after themselves. The majority will respond with volatility over anything they don't like happening, which is how they get through difficult lives.
The situations for them in their home countries is so bad, that living rough here works out better for them and can give them enough money to support their families at home.
Some are brought over with the promise of high earnings and that they may get 'a free house,' and are exploited and vulnerable, while others know exactly what they're about and bring themselves for the opportunities.
Everyone living out or working with the homeless knows who is who.
However around them are lots of others just 'fallen through the safety net homeless' also camped in order to have access to food and services. Many, especially women, don't want to go into the hostels because there are so many issues.
And, every night a small army of the non camped homeless, quietly appear in order to set up their tents or beds for the night, and are packed up and gone early in the morning.
Scarily some are working homeless, desperate for employers not to discover they're sleeping rough.
Two years ago the police issued a S35 dispersal order for the section outside UCHL, requiring people to leave the area for a maximum of 48 hours. They got three hours to be gone. Those who couldn't pack up their tents, or who where out at the time, where deemed to have abandoned their few possessions and tents, which were chucked into rubbish trucks by Veolia.
Needless to say it didn't affect the Eastern European group, just the more vulnerable homeless, and there was rightly an outcry at the tactics.
Councils can use Public Spaces Protection Orders to make it illegal to be camped in a specific area or obstruct a doorway by sleeping in it.
The problem comes that they are expected to then do out reach work with those displaced, to not just make them someone else's problem.