An opportunity and a way back. Institutionalisation and single rough sleepers

1. Rough sleeping generates institutionalisation through the processes of accommodation and assimilation. 2. The process of adaptation involved in sleeping rough is profoundly deskilling in the effect it has on people's abilities to integrate into mainstream housing and social life. 3. Rough sleeping happens for a multitude of reasons, but at the point of first becoming homeless, choice does not enter the equation. 4. Good cold weather shelters are user-friendly and provide an empowering rather than a disempowering service.