I’ve worked with several homeless organizations in Japan over the last 25 years. 1) The organizations’ first priority is to help them secure work (if feasible) together with housing (even if it is a closet-sized space with shared bathrooms), 2) Japan has an enormous advantage… https://t.co/vqdwQFv7HH

…in not having to deal with hard drug addiction (though alcohol dependency/alcoholism is a recurring challenge), 3) they create spaces (like cafeterias) where the newly housed can experience dignity and community, 4) there are usually (always?) health NPOs nearby…

… to provide health care, alcohol addiction treatment, and also mental health care for mental illness, though this latter one continues to be an enormous problem (for an interesting book on this, see Karen Nakamura’s Disability of the Soul)…

5) the organizations will sometimes reach out to families for a potential solution, though often they have become homeless because of family reasons (alcoholism, mental illness, gambling or, sadly, they lost housing because of a loan scandal involving a dishonest member)…

But in Japan, there are so many vacant buildings, abandoned houses, etc, that ‘off-the-grid’ folks we’d characterize as homeless are, to a degree, ‘housed’. They remain unseen by the government and do low-paying work for construction companies, yakuza, etc.