March 9, 2013
An NPO named TENOHASHI provides food and counseling to homeless people every Wednesday night in downtown Tokyo.
On the bitterly cold night of February 20, about 30 members of TENOHASHI and Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) were preparing for their weekly activity near Ikebukuro Station. A 24-year-old man came up to them and told them that he heard about their activity at a city office.
The man said that he is from Sapporo City, Hokkaido. When his father died 3 years ago, his mother was in a hospital for a long period. Unable to keep paying a rent, he became homeless. Then he came to Tokyo to ask his older brother for help, but they did not get along well. Since then he has been sleeping outside for about a month.
He was told at "Hellowork" (public employment security office) that they cannot introduce a job to a person without an address. A city office told him that he cannot apply for welfare assistance because he does not have an address. When the volunteers met him, he only had a few 10-yen coins.
A woman aged 60 was also looking for help to receive public welfare assistance. She has been homeless for many years and started to have health problems. “I haven’t seen my daughter since I left her when she was 16 years old. No one wants to see a mother like me,” she said sadly.
With the support of volunteers, the applications for livelihood protection benefits for the two were later accepted.
According to psychiatrist Morikawa Suimei, representative of TENOHASHI, nearly 10,000 people are homeless in Japan, and their average age is 59 years old. The number of homeless people has decreased since 2003 when he launched TENOHASHI probably because many of them successfully became recipients of welfare benefits and found their own places to live, he said.
“But I feel homeless people are forced to ‘become invisible’,” said Morikawa. Parks have been blocked at night to prevent the homeless from sleeping in them, and benches have been taken away from public spaces. Many homeless people spend nights at fast food stores or shelters with bad conditions. Morikawa went on to comment as follows:
Those living without their own place have complicated backgrounds, such as diseases and disorders. When they visit a municipal office to apply for public assistance, they may be sent away if municipal staff cannot identify the disorders they are suffering, such as dementia.
Other types of problems they have, such as debts and addiction to alcohol and gambling, tend to be recognized as issues they are responsible for and need to solve by themselves. An 82-year-old homeless man I assisted the other day was also addicted to gambling, but he had worked at construction sites for decades and contributed to the nation’s economy for a long time.
People become homeless as a result of various distortions in the society which have been left untouched for many years, such as the exploitation of cheap labor and forms of entertainment with a high risk of addiction. Issues affecting the homeless cannot be solved without correcting the extremes in competition and economic disparity in the society.
On the bitterly cold night of February 20, about 30 members of TENOHASHI and Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) were preparing for their weekly activity near Ikebukuro Station. A 24-year-old man came up to them and told them that he heard about their activity at a city office.
The man said that he is from Sapporo City, Hokkaido. When his father died 3 years ago, his mother was in a hospital for a long period. Unable to keep paying a rent, he became homeless. Then he came to Tokyo to ask his older brother for help, but they did not get along well. Since then he has been sleeping outside for about a month.
He was told at "Hellowork" (public employment security office) that they cannot introduce a job to a person without an address. A city office told him that he cannot apply for welfare assistance because he does not have an address. When the volunteers met him, he only had a few 10-yen coins.
A woman aged 60 was also looking for help to receive public welfare assistance. She has been homeless for many years and started to have health problems. “I haven’t seen my daughter since I left her when she was 16 years old. No one wants to see a mother like me,” she said sadly.
With the support of volunteers, the applications for livelihood protection benefits for the two were later accepted.
According to psychiatrist Morikawa Suimei, representative of TENOHASHI, nearly 10,000 people are homeless in Japan, and their average age is 59 years old. The number of homeless people has decreased since 2003 when he launched TENOHASHI probably because many of them successfully became recipients of welfare benefits and found their own places to live, he said.
“But I feel homeless people are forced to ‘become invisible’,” said Morikawa. Parks have been blocked at night to prevent the homeless from sleeping in them, and benches have been taken away from public spaces. Many homeless people spend nights at fast food stores or shelters with bad conditions. Morikawa went on to comment as follows:
Those living without their own place have complicated backgrounds, such as diseases and disorders. When they visit a municipal office to apply for public assistance, they may be sent away if municipal staff cannot identify the disorders they are suffering, such as dementia.
Other types of problems they have, such as debts and addiction to alcohol and gambling, tend to be recognized as issues they are responsible for and need to solve by themselves. An 82-year-old homeless man I assisted the other day was also addicted to gambling, but he had worked at construction sites for decades and contributed to the nation’s economy for a long time.
People become homeless as a result of various distortions in the society which have been left untouched for many years, such as the exploitation of cheap labor and forms of entertainment with a high risk of addiction. Issues affecting the homeless cannot be solved without correcting the extremes in competition and economic disparity in the society.
