Even on his mile-long walk to the Southampton headquarters along the Railway Trail, Kenneth Robertson comes across plenty of homeless people.

"They are in tents all along it and people are sleeping in the pump room at PHC,'' he says.

It seems the homeless are all around us but remain invisible.

Mr. Robertson, a volunteer at Hands of Love in Southampton, only has to walk a few yards from Hands of Love base to the nearby Belco power station to prove the point.

There in a gully surrounded by thick bushes a crumpled mattress lies strewn with discarded clothes and a suitcase.

This was the home to a mother and two children for a week, he says.

We take a few steps into a wooded area.

There, hidden from view, is a derelict house where another of Bermuda's invisible homeless spends his nights with his heads resting on a pile of clothes from the Hands of Love Mission, amongst a pile of broken plaster and rubble.

Most striking is the fact that the occupant has made no effort to make himself comfortable -- but he has been here for some time, Mr. Robertson assures me.

And within 100 yards of the Warwick Hands of Love building in Cedar Hill there are two such abandoned buildings.

The irony is not lost on Mr. Robertson. One cottage in a prime spot overlooking the North Shore would have real estate agents fighting each other to get their hands on.

Instead it lies empty save for a tatty single bed and the debris of a someone's half existence -- scattered clothes and a few tins of food.

This isn't relative poverty -- here in affluent Bermuda this is witnessing absolute poverty.

Helping those who want to remain hidden can pose its own problems as they dodge detection.

"They go hustling -- washing cars and doing menial jobs.

"The guy living on Belmont golf course goes early in the morning and comes back in the dark but I managed to spot him.'' But once they have slipped into the nether world of life in the open rejoining normal life can be doubly difficult.

Hands of Love founder Fern Wade says: "They have no address, no telephone.

They keep having to go back to social services to find out if they have anything.

"They can only break out when they find meaningful employment.'' Room with a view: This abandoned house in Warwick, in a prime spot overlooking islands in Hamilton Harbour, provides a bolt hole for a homeless person.