Users of Tokyo shelter for displaced people grow to 833+

TOKYO, Jan. 3 Kyodo - The number of displaced job losers finding shelter at a facility offered by the Tokyo metropolitan government during the year-end and New Year's holidays has grown further and reached 833 on Sunday, Tokyo officials said.

Although the temporary shelter at the National Olympics Memorial Youth Center
in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward will close Monday morning, the metropolitan government
plans to continue offering accommodations and food for those in need by booking
capsule hotels and other makeshift housing, they said.
It will also continue helping such people to apply for welfare benefits or find
work.
The shelter was set up last Monday at the expense of the central government a
year after a tent village for similar purposes was built by antipoverty
campaigners and sheltered about 500 people in Hibiya Park in central Tokyo,
prompting criticism of inaction by authorities.
About 800 people were staying at the public shelter on New Year's Day, compared
with 500 people anticipated by the metropolitan government.
The tent village a year ago shed light on the problem that dispatch workers
housed in company dormitories have increasingly tended to lose their
accommodation when their employment contracts are terminated amid the recession
since the fall of 2008.
==Kyodo
2010-01-03 21:30:44