It's a warm, soon-to-be sweltering Tuesday morning. Tim Clayton and five friends were staying cool under a small stand of trees next to an off-ramp of Interstate 75 in Winton Place.

They relax on an old patio seat, a milk crate, a few blankets. A quilt and blankets are tucked under the overpass, a makeshift bedroom for some of them.

Every few minutes, someone in the group takes a swig from a beer bottle. Every half hour or so, one goes to the sidewalk to do a "shift" at the intersection. They sit on a rickety chair, holding the sign they share.

"Homeless. Please help."

The group of five men and a woman usually get enough change, they say, to keep them in beer and cigarettes for the day.

"We're not belligerent," says Clayton, a wiry, shirtless man. "We may not have much, but we get by."

Despite Cincinnati's efforts to crack down on panhandling - with tougher laws and requirements that beggars be registered, and earlier this month, attempts to roust them from overpasses - there's an odd sense of permanence to Tim Clayton's existence.

It's a sense that if personal tragedies can't budge him from the streets, tougher laws won't.

Clayton says that's why he stays out of downtown. He and his crew nest in the open, albeit quiet, corner neighbor to a car dealership, a hotel, a shopping center and a cemetery.

A divorced father of two, Clayton used to own a tiling business, but he lost it and went to prison for a year for using a stolen credit card.

Now, three years later, he and his buddies look out for each other.

Few people bother them. They get food from homeless agencies, churches, strangers. A couple of ministers hold services for them on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Their worst problems, he said, are rats that scramble out of a nearby drainpipe and crawl through camp at night.

Occasionally police tell the campers to move on or give them tickets for soliciting.

Clayton got a ticket for $100. His court date is today. He said he'll ask for more time to raise the money - probably by panhandling.

Nothing, he says, can convince him to seek shelter, or abstain from liquor.

A couple of weeks ago, his 11-year-old son, Tim, was killed in a car-bicycle accident. Clayton attended the funeral, he said, then returned to his corner and his friends.

Last week, his 18-year-old daughter begged him to come with her. He stayed in his camp.

He says he likes living this way. He proudly showed me his knapsack, stocked with paper plates, a lantern, a saw, some peroxide and bandages. He's scrounged up enough wood for a makeshift shed in the woods.

Last year, the city cut down some of the trees in that patch. But the group didn't move.

"They might mess with me, but they ain't gonna run me off. I ain't going nowhere," he said.

Steve Knight, coordinator at the Drop-Inn Center Shelter House, says most homeless people aren't sure they can achieve a normal life.

"What's the one thing they really need? Hope, a belief that things can change," he said. Contact with people who care - not laws - is the best chance to launch hope.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com or phone 768-8395.