Ask any mayor of a North American or European city what keeps them up at night and they’ll likely mention the twin plagues  of housing and homelessness. Since the end of COVID-19 lockdowns, a worsening housing shortage has squeezed vulnerable populations out of homes and pushed even more people to the brink of poverty.

Take New York as an example. The number of rough sleepers doubled between 2022 and 2024, reaching a record-breaking 158,000. So egregious is the housing shortage in London, that one child out of 27 is homeless, the equivalent of one student per classroom .

Tokyo is buckling that trend. In a city of 19 million inhabitants, only 624 are classed as homeless.

Some of the reasons for this success are non-replicable. Japanese communities typic ally have strong family ties that mean families look out for one another in ways that Americans (of whom 27% report estrangement from family members) do not. But there are lessons Western governments could learn from Tokyo’s success, starting with zoning laws.

NIMBY (‘not-in-my-back-yard’) is not a term often heard in Japan.  In the late 1980s, the country experienced a housing bubble due to backlash in Tokyo and Osaka against construction of high-rise condos. This added to increasing housing shortages and inflating prices. The bubble’s explosion in the early 1990s created a political opportunity for the government to pass reforms that federalised zoning laws. With zoning now on a national level, locals had fewer avenues to express NIMBY sentiments.

Homelessness rate, 2023. Source: Our World in Data

In 2002, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumo introduced an Urban Renaissance Policy that further deregulated zoning and prioritized the construction of high-rise residential buildings. Japanese city planners can now only choose among 12 possible zones, compared to hundreds in many North American cities.  The policy sparked a housing boom that has resulted in more units being built in a in a single year in Tokyo than in all of California, which has three times the population.

Tokyo’s achievement is even more impressive considering that all housing units are built within city centres where there are no ‘brownfield ’ sites of unused land. A strong desire for new-builds and constantly updated building codes due to the prevalence of earthquakes, means that old homes are torn down and rebuilt once the former residents die or move out. A 2018 housing and land survey found that 76% of Japan’s housing units have been built since 1981. In London, 55% of the housing stock predates the Second World War, and much of it is single family homes.

A train company brings down house prices

One refrain heard in Western cities is the need for governments to build subsidised housing for low-income citizens. In Tokyo, however, local governments have focused on making it easier for the private sector to build.

A quick look at a Tokyo guidebook reveals that the city’s public transportation network has no “end-of-line” stations, but rather spiderwebs of interconnected rails, linking together communities. Starting in the early 1950s, The Tokyu Railways Company bought and developed the land around each of its rail stations.  Instead of building neighbourhoods of single-family homes, the company constructed high-rise apartment buildings densely packed together around each station hub.

“Japanese communities typic ally have strong family ties that mean families look out for one another in ways that Americans (of whom 27% report estrangement from family members) do not. But there are lessons Western governments could learn from Tokyo’s success, starting with zoning laws.”

In a 2016 interview, Tokyu cHirofumi Nomoto explained that profits from the real estate end of the business are invested back into the railways, which in turn are used to build more housing.

“In Europe, for instance, railways companies simply connect cities through their terminals,” he explained. “That is a pretty normal way of operating in this industry, whereas what we do is completely different: we create cities and then, as a utility facility, we add the stations and the railways to connect them one with another.”

Around Futako Tamagawa Station, one of Tokyo’s largest new urban centres, Tokyu tore down 100 single family homes and rebuilt skyscrapers with more than 1,000 housing units.  A company statement about the development read: “The aim is to achieve urban development where everyone can live in comfort.” The company highlighted that the flats sold quickly because they were close to a train station.

Generous assistance programmes

Abundant housing is not the only reason for Japan’s vanishingly low homelessness rate. Within two decades the number of unsheltered people steadily decreased from just over 25,000 in 2003 to 2,820 in 2024. By contrast, The US government counted over 700,000 unsheltered Americans on a single night in January 2024, marking a threefold increase since the turn of the century.

Researchers from Rikkyo University in Japan and The University of Florida attribute the stark difference  to Japan’s generous and efficient public assistance programme, launched in 2002. The programme, known as Seikatsu-Hogo (Livelihood Protection), provides cash assistance to those experiencing housing insecurity. An important feature is that payments are dispersed within 14 days of application. The only qualification for the program is demonstration of living in poverty, and is often accompanied by additional housing benefits and full medical care.

“Changes to zoning laws and creative thinking are certainly necessary parts of the solution, but so too is finding the emotional and intellectual honesty to admit that homelessness is a problem we have created and must solve.”

In Los Angeles, a rough sleeper can only qualify for cash assistance if they are over the age of 65 or severely disabled. A criminal record disqualifies anyone from the program, as does active dependency on drugs or alcohol. Those who manage to complete the application process can expect to hear back within the following six months. The lucky few who succeed receive $954/month, which is less than half the average rental price of a studio flat. It is unsurprising that homelessness in Los Angeles has skyrocketed in recent years to the point the city is known as the “homeless capital of the US”.

While Tokyo’s success in reducing homelessness is to be lauded, it does come with significant draw backs. Unlike other Japanese cities with well-preserved historic districts, most historic housing in Tokyo’s city centre was destroyed in the Second World War. The few buildings that survived the bombings have been torn down to make room for taller ones. City parks are also few and far between. In London, parks and gardens account for 33% of the city’s land, but in Tokyo only 7%.  Zoning laws also regulate the size of Japanese apartments, resulting in much smaller homes than those found in Western countries.

The biggest lesson from the Tokyo’s success is that homelessness is not an inevitability but instead the result of political apathy, ineptitude, or both. During COVID lockdowns, rough sleepers were quickly moved indoors in London and New York to stop the spread of the virus, proving that housing is available when there is the political will to find it. Changes to zoning laws and creative thinking are certainly necessary parts of the solution, but so too is finding the emotional and intellectual honesty to admit that homelessness is a problem we have created and must solve.