Reporting on London's rough sleeping services @Tokyo Tech

On Monday 26th October, we hosted an event titled ‘The conference reporting on London's rough sleeping services.’ The event was attended by 25 people of various backgrounds ranging from non-profit homelessness organisations, universities, local governments and those actually sleeping rough.

The first session consisted of three presentations, each of which focused on a different aspect of London's rough sleeping services and surrounding issues and presented by ARCH staff. The CHAIN database and RS205 project particularly received interest from the attendees in the following Q&A section.

The second session opened with a brief presentation by ARCH staff. It compared rough sleeping strategies in London and Tokyo around their respective Olympic games and proposed to carry out a night time street count in Tokyo in mid-January. Attendees gave comments on what should be a focus of rough sleeping strategies in Tokyo in the years leading up to the Olympics and also expressed concerns about potential exclusionary drives associated with the Olympics. Little opposition to the idea of conducting a street count in Tokyo was voiced in the discussion, yet some cautious attitude as to how the results would be used was expressed.

It was a great opportunity for us to hear the opinions of the attendees, who were from different organisations and had varied backgrounds. We would like to continue hosting these kinds of events and communicating with a wide range of stakeholders as we continuously search for better solutions to this complex social issue, always in the interest of homeless people. Many thanks for those who attended this event!

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Date: 26 October, 2015 Time: 7:00pm - 9:30pm Location: Ookayama Campus, Tokyo Institute of Technology Attendees: 25 people Program: First Session – Presentations

1. ‘Pan-London rough sleeping strategies and projects’ by Kasai, N

2. ‘Tackling rough sleeping at the local level’ by Kitabatake, T.

3. ‘The Olympics-related redevelopment projects in the borough of Newham and its current situations’ by Machida, D.

4. Q&A

Second Session – Brief Presentation and Discussion

1. ‘Comparing London and Tokyo’ by Kasai, N. and Kitabatake, T.

2. Discussion