On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 01:35:55 +0900, Reg Blank <spambin4me@yahoo.co.jp>
belched the alphabet and kept on going with:

>Eric Takabayashi wrote:
>> I've been spending hours and a proportion of my salary* hanging out with the
>> local homeless. I'd seen a new bunch of homeless there recently, but no one
>> even made eye contact with them, despite being in one of the busiest parts of
>> the city. They were in such a state, lying on the filthy sand in a playground
>> under the pitch dark train tracks, that I could not be one of the people who
>> simply walked by. They were happy to receive anything I had to offer, because
>> they had nearly nothing. I say were, because just this morning about nine a.m.,
>> one group of homeless was cleared out by workers (an elderly couple including a
>> woman on crutches was allowed to stay).
>
>Eric,
>
>When the city workers clear out the homeless in your town, do the 
>homeless get moved to another place? Glad to hear that at least the 
>elderly couple could stay, right?
>
>A homeless man used to sleep on the lone bench in my neighborhood 
>playground.  He only came to the playground after dark to sleep.  He 
>disappears to somewhere during the day.
>
>After a while...
>
>The city workers came and REMOVED THE ONLY BENCH IN THE PLAYGROUND.

There used a to a homeless guy living under an overpass in Kamifukuoka
City in Saitama.

Have you seen what they're doing now to combat homelessness? They're
installing chain-link fencing around all the underpasses and
pedestrian overpasses.

This particular guy I'm talking about, though, they moved his
substantial collection of stuff aside and fenced in the portion of the
underpass where he was living.

So he moved to another portion of the underpass.

Then they moved his shit again and fenced off that portion.

So he moved to another portion of the underpass. Actually, the best
spot in my opinion. If it had been me, I would have picked it to begin
with.

You guessed it. They moved his shit and fenced off *that* portion.
>
>The "homeless person" problem disappeared from our neighborhood.

Wanna know where the Saitama guy lives now? He and his shit are now on
the sidewalk off the access road that parallels the underpass. He's
still basically at the same place, except now he has nothing over his
head to keep him out of the rain.

Here's one of the ways Yokohama deals with it:
http://www.sunfield.ne.jp/~mike/albums/jfds16/pres/pres01.htm