ON the way to the Glasgow winter night shelter it starts to snow. It's the kind of night someone could die if they had to sleep rough on the street. In fact, just a few days ago in Edinburgh, a homeless man – ex-soldier Darren Greenfield - did die on the streets. It's eery, quiet and freezing cold on the Gallowgate, but turn left onto East Campbell Street and there is a babble of voices.

A group of 20 or so people huddle in the doorway of the Lodging House Mission waiting for the clock to strike 10. They shiver, smoke, exchange dark banter. Suddenly the red doors open, spilling out light and warmth and the first man is in. He hands over his belongings, is checked for weapons and gets his pick of the 40 mattresses, laid out on the floor at intervals of 30cms or so, complete with sheet, pillow and sleeping bag. Volunteers in hi-vis jackets welcome their guests and start to serve tea and toast. Another night at the shelter begins.

The shelter started as an emergency response by Glasgow’s City Mission, a Christian charity for the homeless, during 2010's brutally cold snap when temperatures fell to minus 20, but demand has failed to dissipate. It gets people off the street but also aims to provide longer-term solutions. Tomorrow morning Simon Community outreach teams, Govan law centre advisers, Glasgow city council caseworkers and a nurse will arrive to help with that. Tonight though, people just want to get out of the life-threatening cold.

Over a cuppa some start to open up. The diminutive and jovial 63-year-old Jimmy Stout, trousers soaked through from ankles to knees, is almost matter of fact when he explains he’s here because when his partner of eight years died a few weeks ago he got kicked out of her flat. But when he tries to remember the date of her death he looks lost and repeatedly breaks off to tell me: “This is not my place.”

Who, after all, imagines this is where they will one day spend their nights?

George, who comes from Govan, left home aged 15 and, now 44, he has been homeless on and off ever since. He spent three years in the chaotic Bellgrove hostel but left a few months ago because he felt safer on the street. Tonight the shelter saved him from the snow.

Scott Woodward tells me mental health problems and severe anxiety – crippling after another Christmas away from his ex-wife and kids – meant he ignored the eviction letters and ended up sleeping rough on John Street near the City Chambers. He was persuaded to try the shelter when the snow hit. He says he's been judged intentionally homeless and is appealing this decision so he can get housing. The council claims it has no record of this.

Everyone has a story. Andrew Osborne leans over: “Wait till you hear this.” He says he was housed in the Copland Hotel in Ibrox, a B&B used by Glasgow City Council as temporary accommodation, for the last couple of weeks but during an argument a few hours back the manager threatened to call the police. Less than an hour later the police dropped him off in town and he came to the shelter. The Copland Hotel said it couldn’t comment.

John wanted to talk, too, but by the time I get to him tears are dripping from his face because he is in a night shelter rather than with his son on his 18th birthday. He punches the pillar in frustration and a volunteer steers him to a table: “I’ve made hot chocolate. Why don’t we get a wee chat?”

At midnight it’s lights out, but people keep arriving until almost 3am, 38 guests in total leaving just two mattresses un-slept on.

A few miles away in a church hall in the inner-city Anderston area of Glasgow, a further 25 destitute migrants and refugees also spent the night on mats on a cold floor at the Glasgow Destitution Night Shelter. "It is so wrong that we have anyone sleeping rough in this freezing weather," says shelter co-ordinator Phill Jones. "If that is not a recipe for driving people into the open arms of criminals and becoming exploited I don't know what is.”

Sitting in her small office in the back of the warren-like building of the homeless charity the Simon Community on the corner of London Road – the corridors piled up with donated clothes, sleeping bags, toiletries and shoes – Megan Thomson, service manager of the Glasgow street team, agrees. She and Jim Thomas, a support worker who was formerly street homeless himself, list the dangers, including drug dealers with an eagle eye for a beggar who has just made a tenner for a bag of heroin, or those posing as do-gooders who offer accommodation in exchange for labour or sex.

They are keen to dispel myths, explaining that solving rough sleeping is not just about providing roofs over heads. Like Darren Greenfield, the ex-soldier who tragically died on the streets of Edinburgh last week, some refuse help, not trusting the system to work for them.

I ask about a huddle of rough sleepers under the The Hielanman's Umbrella – the passageway under the Central Station railway bridge. “It’s their community,” Thomson says. “It’s how they make money. It’s their ways and means.”

It's time to hit the streets, searching main drags, lanes and even bin shelters for those needing support. Thomson packs hats, gloves, scarves and clean needles and we head out. Within minutes we meet a young man barred from the night shelter due to aggressive behaviour. Last night Thomson argued for the two-night ban to be lifted but staff said they couldn’t risk it. When Thomson tried to find him and offer alternative accommodation he could not track him down. He spent the night out and is pale and drawn but surviving.

At the corner of Gordon Street, sitting in a wheelchair with an amputated leg, is James Hunter, shoulders hunched against the sleet. He readily accepts a hat from Thomson. “It’s been a terrible week,” he says, defeated. After a stint in jail last weekend, he failed to pick up a methadone prescription and has been on the streets begging for drug money.

It might seem bleak but Thomas claims that a raft of additional measures – recommended by the Scottish Government’s Homeless and Rough Sleeping Action Group at the end of November along with additional funding of over £300,000 – have helped. Last night, for example, he was able to pay for a room in the Travelodge for a rough sleeper, with a chaotic drug-addicted lifestyle who had been refusing help for months, from a budget he would previously not had the authority to access. Thomson is hopeful that, after a hospital appointment to sort out a nasty abscess, he can work with him to find a more permanent solution.

Jan Williamson, head of services for Edinburgh’s Streetwork, which provides outreach for rough sleepers in the capital, can also see the impact. "It’s been a tough week," she says. "But what is positive is that we now have direct access to a B&B thanks to the additional funding." There is a dog-friendly room and two doubles so that couples and pet owners – who often stay on the streets rather than be split up – can be accommodated. There are no curfews (missing them is another reason some end up rough sleeping) and staff are understanding of people’s needs.

The Bethany Trust Care shelter in the city has benefited too, with spaces increased from 60 to 75, which means no-one is turned away. Cameron Black, head of resettlement, says in this type of weather the shelter literally saves lives. This week doors have opened early because of the snow and winter jackets and footwear have been provided. Spirits have been good around the dinner table, where guests and volunteers share a hot meal and almost three-quarters of their guests find accommodation within a week.

Back in Glasgow, Thomson and I arrive back outside the Simon Community offices. There we meet Mark, who's been wearing an incongruously sharp but crumpled suit – the white shirt stained – since the beginning of the week when the pal he was staying with disappeared, making him homeless. I recognise him from the night shelter. Tonight, thanks to Simon Community and city council workers, he has a hotel for the night, hopefully with an offer of accommodation to follow.

Not everyone will have a happy ending. Later it will snow again and Thomson will find out that the drug-addicted, chaotic young man from the Travelodge has disappeared without trace and didn’t make his hospital appointment. He’ll scour the town without success. "It’s a long road," he says. "We do our best, that’s the truth." But with a system that is failing the most vulnerable, it's hard for him to feel satisfied with that.

HOW WE FIX THE HOMELESS CRISIS

"We should not have anyone forced to sleep on the street," says Jon Sparkes, chair of the Scottish Government’s Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group and chief executive of Crisis. "The solutions are not easy ones but we can fix this." He's hoping that the next set of recommendations on systematically tackling rough sleeping, due to be made in coming months, will go some way to making his vision a reality.

They are expected to include more support for Housing First, which turns the assumption that you must stay in a hostel while you address your addictions before being being offered a home on its head. Under the model, which Glasgow and other councils claim they are committed to rolling out, permanent accommodation is offered with intense support gradually withdrawn.

Other action needed, says Sparkes, is the removal of exclusions which prevent chaotic individuals accessing the little accommodation there is, meaning they are turned away.

Pete Mackie, a researcher from Cardiff University and co-author of Crisis’s evidence review Ending Rough Sleeping, agrees Housing First is one key way forward though costs are attached. "The evidence is utterly conclusive that it works,” he adds, acknowledging that many rough sleepers don't accept hostel beds because they can see no route out.

What is also important, Mackie stresses, is the need for flexible options that take in differing needs. He claims street work also needs to be "assertive" with new legislation developed to ensure a local authority has a duty to go to the people needing homes rather than waiting until they come to officials.

He and others insist this is not just about housing. Better addiction and trauma services for physical and mental health are essential. This is a population with a life expectancy of 47, who are 17 times more likely to have experienced violence. Many have grown up in care and prison with some abused as children.

The Scottish Government insists it is doing all it can. Housing Minister Kevin Stewart said: “We do not underestimate the scale of the challenge and we know that success will depend on working with social and health care services and other partners. There will need to be sustained effort to secure the changes needed across the system."