Abstract
In recent years, some low-price accommodation facilities (LAF) are becoming a social problem as "poverty business" targeting homeless people. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the actual condition of LAF by analyzing the individual data of a survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2010. In particular, this paper examined whether or not accommodation charge is inexpensive and period of use is short, since the main features of LAF are that they are low cost and temporary habitation. As a result, it was found that despite accommodation charge of LAF being equal to (or higher than) neighboring general housing, the quality of rooms is not equal to (or not higher than) them. Secondly, it was presumed that nearly 60% of LAF users have been in long-term use over one year. In the background, there is the fiscal burden of local governments in public assistance, which hampers moving LAF users to general housing. Solving the problem will demand the establishing of a structure to enable local governments to operate public assistance for homeless people without relying on LAF.
