Japan become homeless due to COVID 19

Daisuke Yoshida sleeps in his car. Masao Hishida sleeps in the park. Both men are victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite not being sick. Spa! Weekly magazine portrays them and others as adding to the group of the "COVID-19 homeless".

Yoshida, 38, and his wife own a tourist hotel in the Tokai region. Yoshida's income this spring is 80 percent less than last year's. They had only one family stay at their hotel in May. It's easy to guess where this story is going.

As the couple was on the brink of bankruptcy, their fairly harmonious relationship had turned sour. The building tension soon turned every little disagreement into a full-blown argument. Despite Yoshida’s best efforts to sort out most of his financial problems, it still left him with a lump sum of debt which he was not able to repay. His wife moved back to her mother's house with their five-year-old daughter. Whereas Yoshida moved into his car.

The occasional odd job would allow him to still earn enough money for food. After work, he would look for an empty parking lot, park his car, and sleep in it. “We can only assume he feels bitter about his predicament”, Spa! says. Despite how large this fluctuating population figure seems to not be included in the national census statistics, he's certainly far from alone.

Hishida, 53, was a college student 30 years ago. Unable to pay tuition, he had to drop out of college, and was caught in the "employment freeze" of the 1990 recession in Japan. What followed was a series of part-time jobs. Then, for the first time in his life, he managed to get a full-time job. He could live in a dormitory. He had seemed to finally find his footing.