AT 9PM on a Tuesday I would usually be tucked up on the sofa watching reruns of The Office.

But this week I was invited to join Galvanise Brighton and Hove, a group of volunteers who walk around the city in the early hours talking to the homeless so we can better understand why people resort to sleeping rough.

In 2017 it spoke to more than 100 rough sleepers, surveying their circumstances, daily experiences and opinions on what support is there for the homeless.

This year volunteers carried out an even bigger survey designed to get to the root of Brighton’s homelessness crisis.

Rough sleeping is an issue fraught with stereotypes of drug use, begging and alcohol problems.

So when I arrived at the Friends Meeting House in Ship Street to meet the Galvanise team, I was not sure what to expect.

I had been given the 10pm to 2am shift, which I felt was a little less punishing than starting at 3am.

After handshakes and hellos, I was quickly placed in a four-man team led by Rosie Swaffer, who had been tasked with rolling cigarettes. Why?

“Bribery,” Rosie joked.

“A lot of the people we talk to have just woken up so they can quite grumpy.

“Sometimes I get told to p*** off, but I would have the exact same reaction if someone woke me up at 2am.

“So we have cigarettes, coffee, and tea so we can make them feel more comfortable talking to us.”

From the outside it may seem needless to go out so late, but there is an important reason.

“When we go out at night, it’s much more likely the people that we speak to are actually rough sleepers,” said Rosie.

“It’s not peak begging time, so most of those who are living in shelters or hostels have gone back.

With a flask of hot water in hand and tea-making supplies at the ready, we made our way down to Hove Lawns wearing the group’s signature blue jackets.

Soon enough an eagle-eyed Rosie spotted a rough sleeper on a bench.

The wind was absolutely freezing, so it was no wonder some people were sleeping in seafront shelters.

He woke up and took up our offer of coffee before introducing himself as Krys, a 33-year-old from Poland.

Though he worked part-time at a market in London, he could not afford to stay in hostels any more.

“It eats up your money very quickly, especially when you have to spend so much every day on food and coffee,” he said.

Though he had places around the city to wash and eat thanks to charities, he had not stayed in a hostel for a while and had been homeless for almost a year.

Still, he had dreams of moving to London.

“I’d love to get a job at a tech company and spend time sitting in expensive coffee shops,” he said.

With his experiences collected in an exhaustive 96-question survey, we set off again.

Most Hove residents are well aware of rough sleepers pitching tents on the lawns.

But two years ago things were very different, said Rosie.

“In 2017 there were no tents anywhere, this is quite new,” she said. It all feels so much more desperate now. I went out on Monday too and it felt really intense.

“There’s quite a lot of anger and frustration about how services work. A lot of them feel left behind.”

The more rough sleepers we spoke to, the more I was shocked by their generosity. One even invited us into his tent after declining our offer of cigarettes.

But what was even more eye-opening was the number of those who were in work.

Krys worked part-time, while another rough sleeper we spoke to was a full-time carpenter who could not afford a deposit on a flat.

By the time we had finished in the early hours of the morning, I was stunned at the daily hardships the homeless go through, and how willing they were to talk about it.

As Galvanise chairwoman Kerry Holgate put it, their stories will not go to waste.

“We’ve used data from our surveys to influence council policy,” she said.

“Because of our findings the council now investigates every homeless death.

“And the Housing First programme, which provides permanent homes for the homeless, has been expanded thanks to us.

“We will keep speaking to the homeless until rough sleeping is eliminated.”