Despite the global recession, homelessness in cities around the world is falling. Can a controversial strategy to give homeless people a roof first – that is, before addressing drug abuse or mental health – take the credit?

At a soup kitchen in Detroit, a former crack addict in a wheelchair is explaining how he lost his legs. “They were amputated in 2000 because I had frostbite from sleeping on the streets,” says Clayton, 54. Fourteen years on from becoming a double amputee, Clayton is still homeless in his home town, but he’s been off drugs for more than a decade, and remains remarkably sanguine about his plight.   Read the rest of this story at The Guardian…