Why is homelessness not an issue in Tokyo?

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Excuse my French, but that article's claims are bullshit: there are plenty of homeless in Tokyo.

According to official statistics, there were over 6,000 homeless in Tokyo in 2004, and while the official figure has dropped since to ~1,600, that assessment is disputed: a large part of the drop is just because tents in visible places were banned. There are also people who are effectively homeless, but stay in all-night cafes etc instead of on the streets.

In my many months of wandering around Tokyo at all hours of the day and night, I only recall seeing a single homeless person.

I suspect the writer has never been to a park in Tokyo? You can walk into any larger urban park (Ueno Park in particular is notorious) and see lots of shacks built from blue tarpaulins, and despite the crackdown there are a lot more than there were back in the 1990s.

Update: Also, the stats above are for a very specific category of homeless: 路上生活 rojō-seikatsu, lit. "living on the streets". These are only a small fraction of all homeless: eg. this UK survey reports 14,420 homeless in London (pop. 8m), of whom only 742 were "rough sleepers".

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