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Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

With the recent boom in tourism in Japan there's been heaps of people coming back after seeing no homeless people, pointing to Japan some utopia with all the answers, and grasping for vague socio and cultural reasons as the explanation.

The answer to why there is less visible homelessness in Japan than NA is a rather more boring one in that they simply didn't destroy their last resort low income housing as much as Canada and America did and so there remain many more options for someone in Japan to duck out of the cold at a very low cost.

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American-style zoning is illegal in Japan: https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.htm...

All zoning is at the national level, with none of the opportunities for NIMBYs to keep new people out of their communities. Shops and offices are permitted in "residential" zones, and rather than specifying what is allowed zoning only specifies what is not permitted.

There are countries in the world where homeless are pretty good hidden, by means of extreme expensive welfare, or are moved away from big cities, or at least touristic centers.

I have no idea in Japan. As I was there I saw extremely poor people (deduced from cloths and lack of hygiene) I doubt they had an own house. Even worst, I saw middle-class neighborhoods that I would associate with a favela in Brazil (albeit very clean and organized, each flat was smaller than a space in Rio.

Yes I think Japan does this as well. For example in Shibuya Miyashita Park, a recent traveller would find a nice mall here, but not too long ago it was a genuine park, one full of homeless.

The government pushed away people with nowhere to live to who knows where and built a luxury mall. All the tourists visiting assume Japan has no homeless.

Out of sight, out of mind.

A shrinking population like Japan's also changes the supply/demand curve in favor of people looking for housing options. That's probably a major factor.

Japan's also got plenty of dubiously legal operations for that kind of thing, like "24-hour cafes" with private booths obviously set up as illegal capsule hotels.

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