How Japan Hides Their Homeless Population

How Japan Hides Their Homeless Population

[tristan]

Working a low paying job to pay for an indoor space to sleep is not homelessness, it's just being poor. This is much better than being poor in the West, where you actually end up sleeping on the street, even if you work, because population growth and regulation have made housing so expensive. Sleeping on the street is a downward spiral, you can't maintain hygiene so your health deteriorates and no one wants to be around you. Sleeping indoors matters a LOT. It sounds like Japan does a reasonable job on this.

[iExploder]

Y'all know that people are pretty well hidden when they're, you know, housed, right?

[johndelagarza]

TBH I think we would be better off doing it like Japan.

[abracadaverous]

To be fair, the US poverty rate is as low as it is because the poverty rate hasn't changed for decades. For example, in my state, the poverty line sits below the rental cost of a studio apartment. So even though you might not have enough money to afford a single month's rent in an extremely modest unit, even if you skip buying food or paying bills, you might not qualify as "impoverished". But de facto poverty is ubiquitous in the States, and wealth inequality is extreme.

[samholland]

15:19 Japan has a higher poverty rate than the US, but America's impoverished are much worse off because of the country's insanely expensive healthcare system, compared to Japan's cheap healthcare system, along with much worse public transit, and less government support than in Japan.

[fcfhkmelb]

Japan has the cleanest homeless people I have ever seen and they don’t bother anyone

[andrwwaugh]

Is it just me, or did it not show the high tech looking pods from the thumbnail?

[liamcollinson]

A capsule hotel shouldn't be a permanent place to live but it's better than sleeping on the streets

[UnicornMeat]

Sounds like they're doing it better than us

[jamesgizasson]

Huh. In the US, we just hide in our cars... if we have them. It's cheaper than rent, and moving is literally 'turnkey'. :3

[adamhill]

Japan doesn’t have the drug addiction issues that they have in the US which is one of the main reasons for homelessness

[nsaad]

So, on one hand they actually help their homeless, without compromising their social standards of decency? And the problem is, what exactly?

[skyrimwarrior]

if i was homeless in a homeless camp in japan, i could leave all my stuff at the camp for 2 whole weeks in Japan, i could come back to the camp, and see all my stuff is still here, everything will still be in my camp. because people in Japan have a percent of taking other people's stuff, meaning i don't have to worry about my stuff being stolen. because it'll never happen. unless the camp is desolate for a long period of time and all my stuff is thrown away by city workers.

[Hurricane]

This is brilliant - all countries should approach the issue like the Japanese even if you think they’re exaggerating the proof is evident on paper and to the eye when witnessing at first hand.

[RJFP]

The elderly, poor, and destitute are marginalized across the board when it comes to homelessness.

[oxvendivil]

Almost more than 3 decades ago I saw homeless people in japan as a kid, they were living on the streets, on the floor, in Tokyo, with their hard bamboo pillow, most are alcoholics, most are in debt due to gambling, they get money by scavenging junk and getting free leftover food and booze from bars, some live in the parks, and afterwards those would live on tarps or blue plastic sack materials made into cube tents usually under bridges.

[uhkqwhg]

I suspect some other unspoken reasons for the low homeless is that there is a culture in japan for employers to care or provide housing for their employee.

[DanH-uf]

The US doesn't care about them either.

[mRahman]

Housing takes up so much of today's cost of living expenses for most people in the West. It can eat up as much as half of someone's income. It's no wonder so many people end up without a permanent residence.

[Bundalaba]

The Beauty of it is they are homeless but the vast Majority of them are not trashy people. They Mind their manners and cleanliness the best they can and even spend time in the Library .