cc wrote:

> "Eric Takabayashi" <etakajp@yahoo.co.jp> wrote in message
>
> > Fukuyama does not have shelters. When it rains, the government is more
> > generous, and allows homeless to stay under a roof in the bicycle parking
> > structure. I saw at least five sleeping there tonight, but I could not
> > recognize them all covered up, to see if they were the people I knew or
> not.
> > Unfortunately, the three or four men who live in the other park behind the
> > bicycle structure had all their things including futons, in the rain. The
> man
> > at the castle is allowed to sleep in a restricted area.
>
> I have not visited the shelters in Osaka, but they have a very bad
> reputation. Homeless don't want to go there, what they'd like -for a near
> future- is being allowed to build/keep their campments in parks and other
> public places. They are more like the traveling  'gipsies' in Europe as
> those ask governments and towns to let them use for free a land, water and
> electricity but refuse sendentarisation....for reasons I fail to understand.

About Tokyo shelters, I have read that homeless prefer where they are to going
to where shelters are, because for example, they would like to be with the
friends they've made. If living relatively comfortably in a park or dwelling
they have made for themselves, I can see that. Some people have been homeless
for years. Many homeless also prefer not to be in their hometowns or where they
left their families, perhaps partly out of shame.

After the Hanshin Earthquake, many victims who lost their homes complained of
having to relocate to government temporary housing units, which were also much
smaller than houses. But particularly those who became accustomed to living in
the units after some years, such as the elderly, later complained that they did
not want to leave the friends and neighbors they had made. Of course the
government response was to finally shut down and remove all the housing units,
forcing people to be taken in by family, to live in public housing, and such,
if they had not been able to rebuild their homes or move.

--
"I want to meet my father and say, your sperm became me."

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