





Homeless people started live on our property

My wife and I got a letter the other day from our municipal city government. The letter basically says that homeless people are living on our property and I and my wife have to remove those people from our property.

When I read the letter, I was like “Are you kidding me ?! Who the hell is living in our property ??“. Later we found that there were actually homeless people living in our property. I was very shocked !



We didn’t know where our property line was exactly until the letter came to our house. Those homeless people started to live in the woods which we thought was city property. Also, we did not notice that they were living in there at first because the homeless camp was surrounded by heavy blackberry bushes and I and my wife could not see the camp.

The first picture above in this article is their camp. It’s crazy big !

Also, I was very surprised that the letter was saying it’s our responsibility to remove those people and the garbage that has accumulated from their camping. It’s me and my wife who may be violating some sections of the city municipal code. The letter says that we may get some fine or punishment if we don’t remove them and their garbage from our property.

According to the letter, the city is charged with preserving and maintaining well-kept neighborhoods for all residents to enjoy. The city received a complaint about my property from somebody and a city property inspector found an accumulation of garbage in our property and the homeless people camping illegally.

Now we have to have them removed from our property. I am very mad at those f***ing homeless people, but I still would like to solve this issue in a peaceful way.

When we got the letter, it was a weekend and the police station was closed except for emergency. So, I looked up what to do online. I have found one website and been doing the following procedures.

1. Post a “No Trespassing” Sign

2. Ask the “Trespassing” Party to Leave

3. Contact the Police and Report a Trespassing Violation

4. Contact the Police if the Person Returns

I have done No. 1 and No. 2 procedures so far. I asked the homeless people to get out of our property directly and posted several trespassing signs in the place where they were camping.

Before I went to the homeless camp and asked them to get out, I was worried about what kind of homeless people were living there. I even thought about fighting against the homeless people if they started to attack me. But, it turned out that the homeless was a nice woman and she said that the other woman living there is currently in jail.

She said she would move to a different place, but I thought we would see if she really moves out.

Also, I took some pictures of the inside of homeless camp to see what kind of stuff they have. Here are the pictures below. They have a lot of things !! I am not sure if they got those things legally.

With this homeless incident, I wondered how many homeless people there are in the US because the numbers in our neighborhoods has kept increasing. It seems out of control. So, I looked up the data online and did a research about homeless people in the US.

Homeless in the United States

The figure below illustrates the number of homeless people in the US and the percentage out of total American population from 2007 to 2017.

The data was collected by Point-in-Time Counts. The Point-in-Time Counts means unduplicated 1-night estimates of both sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations. The 1-night counts are conducted nationwide by the local planning bodies responsible for coordinating the full range of homelessness services and occur during the last week in January of each year. This statistics may not show the accurate number of homeless people, but it’s useful to see whether the counts increased or decreased because the way of survey is same every year.

The number of homeless people decreased from 2007 to 2017. One of the reasons would be the growing US economy. It looks the homeless people has been reducing since 2010. Also, when the Obama administration launched Opening Doors in 2010, the nation’s first strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness, the nation started to see a significant decline in homelessness. However, despite of the growing US economy, the number increased from 2016 to 2017 and still as many as 553,742 American people are struggling to meet their most basic needs.

I searched the data of homeless people in Japan also to make a comparison.

Comparison of Homelessness between the US and Japan

In Japan, the number of homeless people has been decreasing since 2003.

The survey method is Point-in-Time Counts and similar to the US on that aspect. Compared with the number and percentage of homeless people in the US, Japan has obviously much lower numbers. Japan had about 5,500 homeless and the proportion out of total Japanese population was 0.004% in 2017 whereas the US had about 550,000 homeless people and the proportion was 0.17%. Although the US seems to be reducing the homeless people nationwide, the number is still large relative to Japan.

According to Wikipedia, causes of homelessness in the US are lack of affordable housing, divorce, lawful eviction, post traumatic stress disorder, foreclosure, fire, natural disasters, mental illness, physical disability, having no family or supportive relatives, substance abuse, lack of needed services, elimination of pensions and unemployment entitlements, no or inadequate income sources, poverty, gambling, unemployment, and low-paying jobs. There are many root causes to tackle and it seems to take a long time to solve those problems.

In Japan, homelessness thought to be increased in the 1990s as a consequence of the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble. According to The Japan Times, a welfare ministry official believes that support measures from governments, such as counseling, have had certain effects in reducing the number of homeless people. Also, the key to success seems to lie in Japanese culture that socially vulnerable people should be protected. The Japanese constitution stipulates the right to maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living. On the other hand, the US is more of a country where the stronger prey upon the weaker, the law of the jungle, compared with Japan.

Although the US and Japan have very different culture, it seems that government supports or regulations are effective in common to reduce the number of homeless people. I will pay more attention to what the government or politicians do to reduce the number of homeless people.

I wrote about the success of removing homeless people from my property on this blog on March 29th 2019. Please read the page below, if you are interested in how I dealt with this homeless problem.





