The mayor of Kawasaki, Takao Abe, is currently under attack from a group of city residents who don't want a planned homeless shelter put in their neighborhood. Last month, Abe rejected the residents' request for a meeting to hear his explanation of why a disused chemical factory in the Tsutsumine district was being turned into a temporary shelter for 250 people who sleep on the streets around Kawasaki Station.

The residents are worried about security and a decline in property value, but the mayor dismissed their concerns out of hand, saying that the group's request for 24-hour surveillance cameras and buses to transport the people who use the shelter through the neighborhood were both costly and an "abuse of human rights." The mayor's blunt, imperious attitude, which seems to stem from pressure to get the rubber-stamped facility built by March, has angered the residents even more.

Whether or not the group's fears would have been allayed by a calm presentation of facts about homelessness is difficult to know. Such shelters have met similar resistance throughout Japan. Another residents group in Kita Kyushu is trying to block a homeless shelter that is being planned along a route that they say will be used by children going to school.