[Press release] Toimikke partners on Sekai Bivouac, enabling emergency support for people who suddenly lose their housing, through citizens and ICT
Toimikke (Specified Non-Profit Corporation; Representative: Daishiro Sasaki) has developed a dedicated app and support package for people who — against a background of rising precarious work and deteriorating home environments rooted in economic hardship — suddenly lose a safe place to spend the night and are left stranded in the city. We are announcing that we will provide these to restaurants, bookshops, local businesses, temples and other partners across Tokyo, and will run Sekai Bivouac (https://sekaibivouac.jp/) — a project that makes one night’s accommodation and next-day support reachable through multiple points of entry — as a joint program with Tsukuroi Tokyo Fund (https://tsukuroi.tokyo/).
What is Sekai Bivouac, running since 2021?
The pandemic made poverty in Japan more visible. Among those affected, a growing number make a living through unstable work such as spot-work apps while staying in precarious accommodation such as net rooms — and increasingly, such people suddenly lose “somewhere to be today.”
Could this be addressed with the help of citizens at large and of technology? From that idea, Tsukuroi Tokyo Fund developed an intake consultation app and an emergency support package.
The emergency support package contains, in a large letter-pack envelope:
- what is needed for one night’s emergency accommodation
- one meal
- the means to travel to a consultation service
- a battery-powered mobile charger
- a user guide and a list of places to turn for help
These are placed with restaurants, bookshops, local businesses (including estate agents), temples and churches, and non-support NPOs in each area, which become pickup spots — places to run to. Their locations are published on the web. When someone who has lost their housing that day reaches a spot, the staff there complete the intake simply by using the app, and hand over the package. The person can then use its contents to get through the night safely and, the next day, connect to a support organization or public support.
This program — creating places to run to within the city, through ordinary citizens and ICT — began under the name Sekai Bivouac around October 2021. As of the end of 2023 it had 44 pickup spots across Tokyo and Saitama, and had been used 410 times in total.
From 2023 it became a joint program with Toimikke, whose mission is communication poverty and emergency outreach, and we aim to expand it to further areas.
Responding to a growing number of people who suddenly lose their housing
More and more people are living hand to mouth — earning through spot-work apps and food delivery paid daily, and using those earnings to stay in net rooms. They are, in a broad sense, experiencing homelessness, and yet they are becoming harder to see.
On the numbers: the national homelessness survey of January 2023 put the number of people experiencing homelessness nationwide at 3,065 — the lowest since the survey began. But that figure comes from visually counting people on the street during the day. Even before the pandemic, a 2018 Tokyo Metropolitan Government survey estimated that about 4,000 people in Tokyo had lost their housing and were in precarious work (so-called “net café refugees”).
Since March 2020, the emergency rapid-response support we have run with supporters and organizations across Tokyo has responded to SOS calls and consultations from more than 2,000 people. The undercount is likely considerable.
As long as the cycle of “precarious work → precarious housing →” keeps turning, these people are, in a sense, stably unstable, and at that point they are not in difficulty. That is precisely what makes outreach by support organizations so difficult.
To address this, we plan to expand Sekai Bivouac further.
About the organizations
Toimikke (Specified Non-Profit Corporation) An NPO whose purpose is to serve socially isolated people facing poverty who do not fit readily into existing public support; to focus on communication, which has become essential living infrastructure; to use information technology to connect with them in a timely way and deliver support; and thereby to contribute to a society in which no one is left behind. https://toimikke.org/
Tsukuroi Tokyo Fund Founded in June 2014 under the banner “let’s mend the tears in the safety net with the power of citizens,” by members of several organizations that had been supporting people facing poverty in Tokyo. It currently runs shelters for people who have lost their housing, the Tokyo Umbrella Fund, and various other projects. https://tsukuroi.tokyo/
The release on PR TIMES (Japanese): https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000001.000127305.html