Letter: Clarke's cuts are no way to help homeless

Sir: "Every time we go and check we find they [the homeless] won't go in hostels" - Home Office minister David Maclean (report, 11 January).

The reason so many homeless reject hostels in preference to sleeping rough is because in ever more hostels today the homeless individual, as a condition of staying in the hostel, is forced to see a psychiatrist, who after a very brief interview diagnoses, as often as not, mental illness - a stigma for life - and prescribes tranquillisers of one sort or another, which have to be taken as a condition of accepting shelter, rehousing etc.

For many of the homeless it is an unacceptable deal.

ADAM BLUE

Carlisle, Cumbria

The writer was once homeless