City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 111–118

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City, Culture and Society

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Homelessness, housing insecurity and social exclusion in China,

Hong Kong, and Japan
Patricia Kennett ⇑, Toshio Mizuuchi
School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, 8 Priory Road, Clifton, Bristol, Avon BS8 1TX, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: The term social exclusion has been the catalyst for extensive debate regarding the nature of social differ-
Homelessness entiation in European capitalist societies (Jordan, 1996; Rodgers, Gore, & Figueriedo, 1995; Room, 1995)
Social exclusion
and is now widely used and differently interpreted (see Levitas, 1998) in national and international policy
Insecurity
arenas. However, whilst there has been some examination of the value of the concept for exploring and
Mainland China
Hong Kong SAR explaining homelessness in East Asia (Iwata, 2006), the concept has had little influence on existing policy
Japan paradigms. This paper seeks to explore the nature, extent, and dynamics of housing insecurity and home-
lessness and its relationship with social exclusion in East Asia. It will consider the nature and dynamics of
housing insecurity, homelessness, and regimes of inclusion, as well as the institutional and policy
responses to dispossession in three East Asian societies: Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, and Japan.
Crown Copyright Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
The term social exclusion has been the catalyst for
extensive debate regarding the nature of social differentia-
tion in European capitalist societies (Jordan, 1996; Rodgers
et al., 1995; Room, 1995) and is now widely used and dif-
ferently interpreted (see Levitas, 1998) in national and
international policy arenas. However, whilst there has been
some examination of the value of the concept for exploring
and explaining homelessness in East Asia (Iwata, 2006), the
concept has had little influence on existing policy para-
digms. This paper seeks to explore the nature, extent and
dynamics of housing insecurity and homelessness and its
relationship with social exclusion in East Asia. It will con-
sider the nature and dynamics of housing insecurity, home-
lessness, and regimes of inclusion, as well as the
institutional and policy responses to dispossession in three
East Asian societies: Mainland China (hereafter China),
Hong Kong SAR (hereafter Hong Kong), and Japan.
These societies include some of the fastest growing
economies during the last 40 years, with Japan an estab-
lished ‘home-owning democracy’, Hong Kong a ‘neo-liberal
market economy’ without full-democracy and a Special
Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China, in
the context of ‘One country-two systems’, and China, one
of the most dynamic economies in the world since its trans-
formation to ‘market socialism’ in the 1980s. All three soci-
eties have experienced a substantial rise in the standard of
living. However, not all sections of these societies have
benefited from the rapid and dynamic growth, nor has this
growth been sustained across all the societies. Increasing
wealth has been accompanied by widening levels of
inequality and new forms of stratification and exclusion.
These vary in terms of depth, extent and intensity between
the three societies with the gini-co-efficient for Japan (24.9
in 2008) being substantially lower than for Hong Kong
(43.4 in 2008) and China (41.5 in 2008) (UNDP, 2009). Nev-
ertheless, there is evidence to suggest that neo-liberal glob-
alization, as well as domestic structural and social change
have coalesced to create environments in which there is in-
creased individual risk of social exclusion, housing insecu-
rity and homelessness in each of the societies. This paper
will highlight the current and emerging dynamics of social
exclusion, stratification, inequality, and insecurity in the
three societies, and consider their relationship with home-
lessness, one of the most extreme manifestations of social
and housing exclusion.
Homelessness and social exclusion

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 (0) 117 954 5583; fax: +44 (0) 117 954 6756. Saraceno (1997) argues that the reconstruction of de-
E-mail address: p.kennett@bristol.ac.uk (P. Kennett). bates from poverty to social exclusion has involved ‘an ac-

1877-9166/$ - see front matter Crown Copyright Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ccs.2010.09.002
112 P. Kennett, T. Mizuuchi / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 111–118
tual conceptual shift, and a change in perspective; from a
static to a dynamic approach, as well as from a distribu-
tional to a relational focus’ (p. 177). There has been a more
general recognition of the processes contributing to the
increasing complexity and uncertainty of everyday life
(Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992; Culpitt, 1999) and whilst for
most people events such as losing a job, increasing debt
or the breakdown in a relationship will not result in such
extreme consequences as homelessness (Forrest, 1999;
Paugam, 1995), the current context is one in which the po-
tential for the ‘‘accumulation of misfortune” (Marris, 1996)
has been enhanced.
Particular configurations of inclusion and exclusion vary
from society to society reflecting the cultural, economic,
and political specificities of individual societies (Kennett,
2001). The emergence and overlapping of different spheres
of disadvantage can be associated with the specific institu-
tional arrangements and ‘‘webs of welfare”, as well as the
influence of the social relations of class, gender, age, and
ethnicity. Regimes of inclusion are constructed within spe-
cific discourses which legitimize norms, processes and
practices and which reinforce divisions between the
deserving and the undeserving poor. In East Asia, whilst
there has been a growing recognition of the role of
socio-economic and structural factors in the homelessness
dynamic and increasing diversity amongst the homeless
population there nevertheless continues to be an identifica-
tion of homelessness with the narrowest and most visible
forms of destitution such as street sleeping, tent-dwellers,
or vagrants. Accordingly, for the most part the phenome-
non continues to be characterized as ‘male’ and homeless
people subjected to social discrimination, stigma, coercion,
and moral subordination. As De Venanzi (2008) argues ‘the
homeless find themselves at the unfavourable end of two
powerful classifying systems: pollution-stigmatization,
which have the function to preserve a sense of order,
clarity, and continuity in ‘‘normal” peoples lives. . . The
homeless become stigmatized due to supposed blemishes
in their individual character that presumably explain their
deviant way of life’ (De Venanzi, 2008, p. 134).
The changing context of social inclusion and exclusion
in East Asia
Prior to the 1990s in the newly industrialized economy
of Hong Kong and the economically buoyant Japan, the
homeless were invisible to mainstream society and policy
makers, and characterized as ageing, aberrant and morally
deficient individuals. The bursting of the bubble economy,
the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, and economic stagnation
was followed by the SARS epidemic in 2003 and, in combi-
nation, contributed to a severe economic downturn, grow-
ing unemployment and wage cuts, rising poverty and an
increase in those inadequately housed, visibly homeless,
and destitute.
In Hong Kong and Japan the painful recovery following
the Financial Crisis, institutional and policy responses from
governments, and the extensive intervention, support and
lobbying from non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
and grassroots organizations working with the homeless
did bring about a reduction in the numbers of people sleep-
ing on the streets. However, what has become clear is that
the problem is far from ‘solved’. Whilst the risk of home-
lessness is clearly greater during periods of economic
downturn (as suggested by the current upward trajectory
of homelessness in the context of the global ‘financial tsu-
nami’), the homeless dynamic is more complex and multi-
dimensional and linked to broader structural and social
change within societies and the changing dynamics of
inclusion and exclusion. Income disparities have consis-
tently widened, greater job insecurity with the deteriora-
tion of employment conditions and the expansion of
contract and part-time work, welfare systems that are un-
able to adequately provide for the new conditions of inse-
curity and risk, and issues of access to and affordability of
housing are emblematic of this new dynamic. As the con-
text and dynamics of housing insecurity and homelessness
have been transformed in East Asian societies, the home-
less population has increasingly included younger, better
educated, and able-bodied men and women.
The Hong Kong government’s strategy for maintaining
its competitiveness and economic growth in the context
of globalization and the rapid economic development in
the Mainland has been to restructure towards a post-indus-
trial, service-oriented society. The Hong Kong economy has
become increasingly service orientated1 with a continued
rise in the share of the service sectors in GDP from 73%
1988, to 86% in 1998 and 92% in 2008, as labour intensive
production processes have shifted into the Chinese Mainland
(HKSAR Government, 2010). This shift has been accompanied
by increasing income disparities between high-income and
low-income earners as the wage gap between skilled/well-
educated and unskilled/less well-educated workers has con-
sistently widened.
In China, until the 1990s poverty was regarded as a rural
phenomenon. In urban areas of this state socialist society
the work unit system provided the institutional framework
for the range of state proved social welfare (Chan, Ngok, &
Philips, 2008; Wong, 1998). Social division was constructed
around political background and urban–rural residence
but, in general, it was a society of low-income equality.
However, by the 1990s fundamental transformation
through an extensive economic reform programme empha-
sising global integration, marketistation, privatization, and
competitiveness saw the emergence of a ‘socialist market
economy’, the dismantling and reconstruction of state-
owned enterprises and rural communes, the removal of
employment guarantees and the emergence of a ‘floating
population’ of migrants in urban areas largely excluded
from social rights (Solinger, 2006; Li, 2008; Cai, Du, &
Wang, 2009). With the deterioration and dismantling of
the enterprise-based schemes, the cornerstone of social
protection in urban China, and the wholesale privatization
of the housing stock following the reform of the housing
system in the 1990s, the government has sought to
establish a multi-tier social and housing security frame-
work. The former is based on contributory social insurance
programmes introduced in 1986 and the Minimum
Standard of Living Scheme (MLSS). The latter has been
1
Comprising the wholesale, retail and import/export trades; restaurants and
hotels; transport, storage and communications; finance, insurance, real estate and
business services, community, social and personal services and ownership of
premises (Hong Kong Govt 2010).
 P. Kennett, T. Mizuuchi / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 111–118
extended substantially in terms of the number of beneficia-
ries and the level and scope of support since 1999.
The three-tier housing security system comprises the
Public Housing Fund (PHF), with employees and employers
contributing to an account with the local PHF management
centre to assist with mortgages for home purchase for med-
ium and low-income earners; affordable housing for owner
occupation built by commercial housing developers receiv-
ing tax rebates from the government; and low-rent houses
targeting the poorest with local governments responsible
for providing low-rent housing for low-income residents.
However, with public finance for low-rent housing virtually
non-existent and only a handful of China’s larger cities
(Shanghai and Beijing, for example) allocating funding to
low-rent homes, it has become extremely difficult for many
of those in need to access housing they can afford (Zhou,
2006). For those households unable to afford to buy but
who fail to meet the eligibility threshold for low-rent hous-
ing either because of income or residential status (hukou)
again options for accessing decent housing are extremely
limited. Whilst for some the Chinese city has become a
place of opportunity, wealth accumulation, and social
mobility, for many others it has become a space of insecu-
rity, unemployment, poverty, discrimination, and exclusion
(Yan, 2005).
In China traditional forms of poverty have been associ-
ated with households with the three nos’ – no stable in-
come, no capacity to work and no family support. More
recently, rapid social and economic transformation, urban-
ization, and the rise in insecure employment, underem-
ployment, and unemployment have created new
dynamics of risk, insecurity, and social exclusion (Wong,
1998; Cook, 2002; Kennett, 2008). Security of tenure
whether to land or housing, fear of eviction, and forced
relocation have become real issues of concern
(Westendorff, 2007). Underemployment in rural areas and
the rapid economic development of cities and regions, par-
ticularly along the Eastern coastal region has generated
enormous rural-to-urban migration in China. Migrants
have been largely excluded from access to social rights,
with rural- and urban-registered citizens being governed
by institutionally separate policy regimes (via hukou or
the household registration system) (Chan & Li, 1999;
Davies & Ramia, 2008). The household registration system
requires each person to register in either a rural or an urban
area and was a key element of government control of pop-
ulation movement in the 1950s (Cheng & Selden, 1994). It
is still very much in existence today but, in general, is en-
forced with a little less vigour and more flexibility (Chan
& Buckingham, 2008). It cannot be changed without the
permission of the receiving jurisdiction. Whilst registration
for skilled people is often no problem, it is more difficult for
migrants from the countryside. These people tend to fall
into the category of ‘floating population’. In 2005, 40% of
the country’s population was classified as urban, expected
to be more than 70% urban by 2050. Rapid urban growth
rates of 3.0% each year from 1990 to 2000, more than two
times faster than the world’s average. The growth rate in
Beijing and Shanghai between 1982 and 1998 can be partly
attributed to the expansion of city boundaries to include
populations that lived on the periphery. More recently it
has been rural-to-urban migration which has been the
113
main cause of population growth. The size of the migrant
workforce has expanded rapidly in recent years, a growth
that is expected to continue over the next decade. As
Westendorff (2007) explains ‘Today the size of the floating
population maybe as high as 150–200 million and is
expected to expand further with the migration to the cities
of another 300 million rural residents by 2020’
(Westendorff, 2007, p. 11). Housing conditions for migrant
workers have always been poor, often overcrowded, lack-
ing basic sanitation facilities, heating, and air conditioning,
with the majority living in dormitories provided by their
employers. However, given the substantial rise in the num-
ber of migrant workers even this inadequate form of shelter
is unable to meet demand, resulting in the emergence of
informal, peri-urban or suburban settlements on the
fringes or outskirts of many Chinese cities, particularly
Guangzhou, Shenzen, and Beijing for example. A study by
Zhen et al. (2009) identified that as of 2008 there were
867 chengzhongcun or ‘urban villages’ (also see Zhang, Zhao,
& Tian, 2003; Tian, 2008) in the Beijing Metropolitan Area,
clearing indicating that ‘Despite their informal status in the
housing market, urban villages clearly play a prominent
role in the provision of housing in Beijing’ (Zheng, Long,
fan, & Gu, 2009). However, the physical environment is
extremely poor, pubic services are limited and poorly
maintained, and the settlements themselves are constantly
under threat of demolition (Zheng et al., 2009;
Westendorff, 2007).
In Japan, particularly since 2002, the rise of insecure
employment and the new phenomenon of housing-poor
and housing-vulnerable people, such as ‘freeters’ (un-
skilled part-time workers who frequently change jobs or
only work casually), Internet cafe refugees (Ronald,
2009), homeless young people mainly in their 20s and
30s who are unable to afford accommodation, people laid
off from companies, and ex-prisoners has become particu-
larly evident (Kosugi, 2005). Approximately one third of
the total workforce is engaged in non-regular employ-
ment, whilst the number of working poor has also been
rising, reaching more than 10 million in 2006, an increase
of 30% over the previous decade. The employment of tem-
porary and daily workers fell by 3.6% in the 12 months to
July 2009, compared to a fall of 1.1% for regular employ-
ees. In 2009 the working poor made up more than 80%
of the poor population in Japan, compared with around
63% on average for OECD countries. Around 11% of indi-
viduals living in households with at least one person
working are poor in Japan, the fifth highest level in the
OECD after Turkey, Mexico, Poland, and the United States.
According to the OECD (2009), whilst Japans tax and
transfer system (social assistance) is relatively good at
relieving poverty for jobless households with children, it
does very little to alleviate in-work poverty (OECD,
2009) In 2009, the unemployment rate in Japan was
5.7%, 2% higher than at the end of 2007, and equivalent
to approximately 1.3 million more individuals joining
the ranks of the unemployed (OECD, 2009). Since the
1990s, young people have faced great difficulties in
accessing the secure labour market, a situation that has
worsened following the current economic downturn. The
unemployment rate for 15–24 year olds rose by 2.4% be-
tween July 2008 and July 2009, reaching 9.9%.
114 P. Kennett, T. Mizuuchi / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 111–118
Defining and measuring homelessness
The exact number of homeless people in a country is
notoriously difficult to quantify given the varying defini-
tions and methodologies applied, different terminology
for the dispossessed, as well as the transient and hidden
nature of the phenomenon. As indicated earlier in this pa-
per, in East Asia the dominant understanding of homeless-
ness is ‘rooflessness’, which is identified by ETHOS (The
European Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclu-
sion) (see Edgar et al., 2004) as the most extreme classifica-
tion of homeless people according to their living situation:
 Rooflessness (without a shelter of any kind, sleeping
rough).
 Houselessness (with a place to sleep but temporary in
institutions or shelter).
 Living in insecure housing (threatened with sever exclu-
sion due to insecure tenancies, eviction, domestic
violence).
 Living in inadequate housing (in caravans, on illegal
campsites, in unfit housing, in extensive overcrowding)
(Edgar).
Overlapping this classification Edgar et al. (2004) iden-
tify three domains which constitute a ‘‘home”, the absence
of which can be taken to delineate homelessness: the phys-
ical domain refers to having an adequate dwelling or space
over which a person and his/her family can exercise exclu-
sive possession; the social domain refers to one’s ability to
maintain privacy and enjoy relations; the legal domain re-
fers to having a legal title to occupation. Thus, a women
may have security of tenure, but might be experiencing
domestic violence and thus be excluded in the ‘social do-
main’, exclusion from the legal domain might refer to hav-
ing a roof over one’s head but no legal title and fear of
eviction. This typology and conceptual understanding of
home, homelessness, and housing insecurity provides a
framework to begin to identify and understand the
complexity of processes and circumstances contributing
to social exclusion and dispossession, facilitating the devel-
opment of policy responses that are preventative rather
than responsive, triggered only when an individual or
household has reached the very bottom of the ‘spiral of
precariousness’.
The remainder of this paper seeks to explore the extent,
nature and dynamics of housing insecurity and homeless-
ness in China, Hong Kong, and Japan, and to outline existing
responses and strategies for inclusion.
Enumerating homelessness and housing insecurity
In Japan a nationwide survey conducted in 2000 re-
vealed a total of 17,172 rough sleepers in the five Japanese
cities of Yokohama, Kawasaki, Nagoya, Tokyo, and Osaka
(MHLW, 2003). According to the most recent Government
survey in 2010, there are now 13,124 rough sleepers in
Japan. However, if those living in temporary shelters,
transitory housing, internet cafes, hostels, and other inse-
cure housing are taken into account the number of home-
less in Japan could well exceed 30,000 people (Mizuuchi,
2008; Obinger, 2009).
In Hong Kong a Street Sleepers Registry has been estab-
lished to officially capture the number of street sleepers.
This shows that the number of street sleepers has gradually
declined from its peak of 1,399 in February 2001 to 785 in
December 2002 and 335 in 2007. However, during 2008
and 2009 numbers have again started to rise with the aver-
age number of registered street sleepers per month from
February 2008 to January 2009 estimated to be 358, show-
ing an increase of 23 people over the average figure for the
previous year (HKSAR Government, 2009a, 2009b). The fig-
ures do not include residents of the seven street sleeper
hostels operated by NGOs on a self-financing basis, nor
the five hostels and temporary shelters operated by NGOs
and funded by the Social Welfare Department.
Although government expenditure on, and the percent-
age of the population living in public rental housing in
Hong Kong have been in decline in recent years (from
16.8% of total public expenditure in 1999/00 to 5.6% in
2009/10, and from 35.1% in 2000 to 29.7% in 2010, respec-
tively (Hong Kong Housing Authority, 2010)), publicly pro-
vided flats play an extensive role in meeting the housing
needs of the Hong Kong population. The paradox of exten-
sive, relatively non-stigmatised public housing provision in
the context of a pervasive ideology of unfettered, free mar-
ket capitalism has generated enormous debate. However,
as Castells, Goh, and Kwok (1990) argue state involvement
in housing has been a critical element for economic com-
petitiveness, containing labour costs, the reproduction of
labour power, and the maintenance of social stability. Nev-
ertheless, in Hong Kong in 1997 an estimated 179,000
households (460,000 persons) were inadequately housed.2
By 2002 the number had fallen an estimated 100,000
households (274,000 persons). The Bedspace Apartments
Ordinance introduced in 1994 (Chapter 447) requires that
‘any flat, or where the partitioning wall or walls between 2
or more adjoining flats have been demolished, in which there
are 12 or more bedspaces occupied or intended to be occu-
pied under rental agreements’ must apply for a licence
(HKSAR Government 2009a, 2009b) Data in 2008 indicates
that the official number of domestic household members liv-
ing in rooms (permanent rooms and cubicles), bedspaces, or
cocklofts of private flats in 2007 was 53,200, including 6100
children aged between 0 and 14, 3400 individuals aged
between 15 and 24, 23,000 between 25 and 49, and 20,100
over 50 years old (HKSAR Government, 2008). However,
according to estimates from the Society for Community
Organisation (SoCo), still some 100,000 people live in cage
homes, or in flats divided in to cubicles particularly in poor
parts of Kowloon such as Sham Shui Po and Tai Kok Tsui
(Reuters, 2010; South China Morning Post March, 2009), at
a time when rents for small units with a saleable area less
than 430 sqft have increased year on year, by 11% in 2005,
10% in 2006 and 13% in 2007. The Hong Kong Government
argued in 2008 that people choose to live in bedspace
apartments because the rent is low and they are conve-
niently placed in urban areas (HKSAR Government 2008;
Time, 2009). Thus, they perceive there is a demand for this
type of private accommodation in the market and the Hong
2
The term ‘‘inadequately housed” includes persons living in squatter areas, in
temporary housing, in non-self contained flats, bedspace apartments and cage homes,
in roof-top structures, or in shared accommodation in the private sector.
 P. Kennett, T. Mizuuchi / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 111–118
Kong Government has no plans to displace such accommo-
dation. This approach is characteristic of the neo-liberal,
market oriented, and residual model of welfare that domi-
nates in Hong Kong.
In China, the homeless population is particularly difficult
to quantify. As well as beggars and long-term street sleep-
ers, rural–urban migrant workers without the required reg-
istration documents, the urban poor and laid-off workers,
forced evictees, and children on the streets fall into the offi-
cial category of ‘vagrants and beggars’. In 2009 there were
estimated to be between 20 to 23 million jobless migrant
workers in China (China Daily, 2009a; Telegraph, 2009).
The rising numbers of jobless migrants intensifies the com-
petition for work, creating the conditions for even lower
pay, poorer conditions, and homelessness.
In China, a 2006 National Survey by the National Work-
ing Committee on Women and Children indicated that
there were at least 1 million vagrant and begging minors
in China (China Daily, 2009b). The number of urban street
children, based on the number of children passing through
protection centres is, according to the Ministry of Civil af-
fairs, around 150,000 having increased significantly in ur-
ban areas in China over the last two decades. In addition,
an estimated 100,000 Chinese children are abandoned each
year, most of them disabled and girls, and are cared for in
China’s Child Welfare Institutes (CWI’s) (Liu and Zhi,
2009; Ministry of Civil Affairs, 2006).
Strategies for inclusion
Social security in Hong Kong comprises Comprehensive
Social Security Assistance (CSSA), Old Age Allowance, Dis-
ability Allowance, and the relatively ‘young’, contributory
personal account, the Mandatory Provident Fund. The CSSA
in non-contributory provides minimal benefits, is designed
to be temporary and transitional and only for those who are
‘least able to help themselves’. Recipients are required to
undergo a strict means test on their assets and income.
Homeless people are eligible to receive temporary, emer-
gency cash grants, and can apply for Comprehensive Social
Security Allowance (CSSA), and public housing which in
Hong Kong is extensive and relatively non-stigmatised,
accommodating almost a third of the population (as dis-
cussed earlier in this paper), providing they meet the crite-
ria in relation to residence, income and assets, ability to
and actively seeking work, and willingness to participate
in the Support for Self-Reliance Scheme. New arrivals from
China, for example, are ineligible to apply for CSSA and
public housing until they have been resident in Hong Kong
for 7 years (except in very exceptional circumstances). This
is a group of people subject to institutional and individual
discrimination and particularly vulnerable to insecurity
and homelessness. The majority of new arrivals have non-
existent or limited social networks, relatively low educa-
tional attainment and work experience and the unemploy-
ment rate for new arrivals is disproportionately high.
Although evidence shows that over time new arrivals are
integrated into the local labour market, they are likely to
earn a much lower median income than the overall work-
ing population (Law & Lee, 2006; Smart, 2003). Research
in 2002 showed that 66% of street sleepers were between
20 and 49 years of age and were able bodied, whilst 30%
115
were on CSSA. Of the non-CSSA receiving street-sleepers
10% worked full-time, 20% took odd jobs, 10% lived on the
streets, and the rest relied on loans or financial support
from friends and relatives. 28.5% of the street sleepers were
drug misusers (Wong, 2001).
In Hong Kong in 2001 a 3-year action plan to help street
sleepers was implemented as a response to the rising num-
ber of people living on the street and concern that the
homeless population was getting younger, fitter, and more
short-term (Legco, 2004). NGOs, funded by the govern-
ment, have been encouraged to play a central role in pro-
viding hostel accommodation, and integrated services
such as counseling, assistance with accommodation, advice
on employment, arrangement of job placement, and appli-
cation to the emergency fund (Kornatowski, 2008). There
are seven street sleeper temporary shelters operated on a
self-financing basis, with a period of stay not exceeding
six weeks, as well as five urban hostels and a temporary
shelter operated by NGOs (and funded by the Social Wel-
fare Department) with a period of stay normally up to six
months, as well as Social Welfare Department rough sleep-
ers outreach teams and emergency shelters. Whilst shelter
provision and services have increased over the years these
are services directed at homeless men. Women’s homeless-
ness is invisible in Hong Kong as in other East Asian socie-
ties, but what is evident is that as domestic violence has
increased, with 3412 cases newly reported representing
an increase of 37.1% for the same period in 2005, women’s
refuge centres have been unable to meet the demand with
places increasing from 152 to 180 between 2006 and 2007
(news.gov.hk, 2007).
With the deterioration and dismantling of the enter-
prise-based schemes, and the near complete privatization
of public housing in 1998, the cornerstones of social protec-
tion in urban China have all but disappeared. The multi-tier
social security framework based on contributory social
insurance programmes, first introduced in 1986, and the
MLSS providing social assistance, have been extended sub-
stantially in recent years. However, in terms of the number
of beneficiaries and the level and scope of support but the
MLSS in particular remains under-resourced, under-regu-
lated, and the homeless and unregistered migrants have
virtually no entitlements.
As discussed earlier, lacking an urban resident permit
and in the absence of policies to support rural migrants,
their security of tenure to shelter in the city is tenuous. Mi-
grants without government approval and employment will
have difficulty in securing somewhere to live and therefore
some spend their nights sleeping in railway stations, har-
bours, and empty buildings. In China in 2003 the former
‘Measures for Internment and Deportation of Urban Va-
grants and Beggars’ was replaced by the ‘Measures for the
Assistance and Administration of Persons Without Assured
Living Sources in Cities’. This reform represented the aboli-
tion of a 20 year old regulation that allowed police to round
up beggars, homeless people, and those without identifica-
tion cards at will and incarcerate them before returning
them to their place of origin. It indicated a change in
approach from one that coerced and criminalized homeless
people and called on security officers to punish activities of
‘‘hooliganism” that disrupted public order such as begging
and camping in the open, to one that emphasised the ‘‘vol-
116 P. Kennett, T. Mizuuchi / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 111–118
untary” basis of the new relief system. Regulation on aiding
and managing vagrants and beggars in urban areas was
adopted by the 12th Executive meeting of the State Council
in June 2003, presided over by President Wen Jiabao. It was
stated at the State Council that the old regulation was no
longer suitable for the current situation. Since 2003 respon-
sibility has transferred from the Ministry of Public Security
to Civil Affairs and is an indication of a change in approach
to one of relief management for urban indigent vagrants
and beggars (China Daily, 2003a). Custody and repatriation
centres which detained millions of people annually in the
late 1990s have been converted into aid centres for home-
less people. Under the new system police have the duty to
‘inform beggars or vagrants that they can ask for help from
shelters’. Under the new regulation, vagrants can receive
help from these aid stations if they are unable to feed
themselves, have no relatives or friends with whom they
can seek refuge and if they receive no minimum living
allowance. The new centres offer shelter for a limited per-
iod and limited amounts of food (China Daily, 2003b).
The reform of regulation for homeless people and the
‘floating population’ has been hailed by many in China as
a major civil rights victory, a curb on police powers and
an indication of the loosening of the hukou system (China
Daily, 2003a). However, the key goal of the authorities re-
mains the same and that is to repatriate individuals to their
place of previous residence or registration, rather than to
provide long-term, affordable accommodation and welfare
provision. In the context of the rise in the number of beg-
gars in urban areas regulation, coercion and criminalisation
continues with begging banned in many places, including
government buildings, subways, hospitals, entertainment
venues, and parks. Beggars are often portrayed in the media
as deceptive professionals with substantial earnings
derived from preying on passers-by sympathy, enhanced
by using elderly and disabled people, and children
(China Daily, 2004; Guardian, 2005).
Until 2001 street children were treated in the same way
as adult vagrants, gathered and sent back by relief and
administrative stations. More recently a series of laws and
regulation including the Law on the Protection of Minors
and the Law on the Prevention of Crimes by Minors have
been introduced. In addition, the introduction of special
protection centres providing short-term protection and
education and the administration by the Social Welfare
and Social Affairs Department of the Ministry of Civil Affairs
demonstrated the separation of street children from adults
in terms of public assistance (China.org.cn). By 2003 the
Chinese government had spent more than 120 million yuan
(14.46 million US dollars) to establish more than 130 special
protection centres. The street children also have access to
food and accommodation relief stations, which also provide
assistance for adult homeless people. The Ministry of Civil
Affairs plans to add 30,000 beds in shelters across the coun-
try by 2010 to help about 1.5 million homeless people.
In Japan, the first official use of the term ‘homeless’ in
the policy arena was in the ‘Special Measures Law
Concerning Assistance for the Rehabilitation of the
Homeless’ enacted in 2002. This represented open and legal
recognition of homelessness as a ‘new’ social problem and
the inability of government to ignore the issue or the voices
of ngos and activists supporting the homeless. However,
homelessness is not a new phenomenon in Japan. ‘‘Sleeping
rough” in Japan is something that historically has been
linked to the casual labour hiring sites (yoseba) where male
day labourers would congregate (Fowler, 1996). Most of the
day labourers lived in doya, rude lodgings or flophouses,
whilst working at day labour. Since most of them had no
residency papers they were considered a problem of poor
people with no fixed abode and were shunted into the par-
ticular local areas around yoseba hiring sites and dealt with
according to the few policies that pertained only to those
districts (Fowler, 1996; Guzewicz, 2000). In the first nation-
wide survey of rough sleepers made in 2002, 36.2% of the
national total of 25,296 had experience of working and liv-
ing at yoseba hiring sites; 49.4% had worked at Kamagasaki
in Osaka City, 31.3% at Sanya in Tokyo’ Taito ward, 20.2% at
Kotobuki-cho in Yokohama, 19.6% at Sasajima in Nagoya,
and 19.4% at smaller scale yoseba hiring sites in Fukuoka,
Kobe, and other cities (MOHW, 2003). Doya lodgings pro-
vided the workers with a one-room living space of 4.95
square meters with shared kitchen and shared toilet facili-
ties. If work could not be found for extended periods and
they were unable to pay lodging costs, they were left with
little alternative but to sleep on the streets. As the eco-
nomic downturn began in the late 1990s, extended periods
of economic activity, particularly for elderly day labourers
and those with little or no family contact or support net-
works, resulted in the dramatic growth and increasingly
visibility of the homelessness problem.
In the 2002 national survey, the nine largest cities, begin-
ning with Tokyo and Osaka, had 65.9% of the total number of
homeless people nationwide, whilst at the same time home-
lessness had become a visible phenomenon in regional cities
as well. Routes leading to homelessness were no longer lim-
ited to yoseba hiring sites with over 60% of the total having no
experience of the yoseba. Subsequent nationwide surveys
conducted in 2007 and 2010 showed that the total number
of homeless had declined by 6,732 to 18,564, and by a further
5,530 people to 13,124 in the later study. It was also shown
that that the average age of the homeless population rough
sleeping had increased by 1.6–57.5 years, and the proportion
of people who had been homeless for 5 years or more had
climbed to 41.4%.
The social security system in Japan provides a distinct
and highly stigmatized tier of means ttested, special pro-
grammes for those excluded from the mainstream labour
market (Kenentt and Iwata, 2003). Eligibility criteria are
harsh and, as in many societies, require a fixed address.
Nevertheless, welfare benefits, health care programmes,
and low-rent recovery assistance lodgings (transitional
housing) have provided routes off the street for homeless
people in Japan, particularly when combined with support
from the NGOs who have provided the ‘‘fixed abode”, low-
rent recovery assistance lodgings, and rehabilitation sup-
port (Kornatowski & Mizuuchi, 2009). In 2006, there were
30,299 cases nationwide of people receiving welfare
payments and escaping from sleeping on the streets or
homeless conditions (Mizuuchi, 2008). In addition, publicly
provided homeless rehabilitation support centres have
been established in Japan’s largest cities (under the aus-
pices of the Homeless Assistance Law), with 19 locations
in 9 cities and a capacity of 2,025 people, and 11 locations
with a capacity of 1,953 people These facilities have had a
 P. Kennett, T. Mizuuchi / City, Culture and Society 1 (2010) 111–118
limited success in assisting people in escaping homeless-
ness, and indeed the likelihood of individuals returning
repeatedly to these transitional facilities is increasing
(Abe, 2009). The proportion of people who directly enter
mainstream housing and manage to house themselves
using welfare payments did not exceed 7.9%. Provision for
women includes accommodation at facilities run under
the auspices of the Child Welfare Law, the Anti-Prostitution
Law, Public Assistance, or Women’s Counselling Centres.
This type of provision is in generally inadequate for meet-
ing the needs of homeless women. The numbers of places
are limited and demand far exceeds supply. Many are
unwilling or unable to accept migrant women (Kennett
and Iwata, 2001).
Conclusion
In the major urban areas of Hong Kong, China and Ja-
pan homelessness, housing insecurity and social exclusion
continue to feature in the day-to-day lives of a substantial
minority of the population. Whilst not a ‘new’ phenome-
non, the nature and manifestation of, as well as routes
into homelessness and housing insecurity have changed
and become more complex. In Hong Kong and Japan shel-
ter provision and rehabilitation services for the homeless
have increased substantially in recent years, whilst in
Mainland China aid centres have proliferated within major
cities. The appearance of homeless young people has con-
tributed to some reassessment in attitudes towards and
interpretations of homelessness and the homeless, partic-
ularly in Japan. There is also a growing recognition of the
benefits of constructing broader, more inclusive social
security measures more generally as a strategy for miti-
gating against insecurity and homelessness. However, cur-
rent strategies for inclusion have been developed from the
narrowest understanding of homelessness, are responsive
rather than preventative and, for the most part, have
failed to provide sustainable and effective outcomes for
homeless people. Whilst there has been some reduction
in the numbers of street sleepers, there has been only lim-
ited response to the growing recognition that housing
insecurity, whether in the expanding peri-urban informal
settlements of many Chinese cities, the ‘cage homes’ or
‘cocklofts’ of Hong Kong, or the transitory housing and
internet cafes in urban Japan, and rough sleeping are
interlinked as people in precarious social and economic
circumstances shift from one form of homelessness and
insecurity to another.
Locating an understanding of homelessness and housing
insecurity within a broader conceptual paradigm, as well as
in the dynamic context of social exclusion and inclusion,
provides the framework for highlighting the complexity
not only of routes into and out of various forms of home-
lessness, but also of the overlapping spheres of discrimina-
tion, inequality and disadvantage that contribute to
homelessness and insecurity and which are impacting on
a wider spectrum of society.
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