Laura Callaway, assistant director of Exeter Homeless Action Group, said that, as a group, they often came at the back of the housing queue but made up 80% of clients.
She later recalled in her autobiography that as a 13-year-old she took on a group of adults, to their "astonishment", in a prewar fish-and-chip shop queue after one said that at least Adolf Hitler had given Germany back its self-respect.