This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Japan has the lowest measured rate of homelessness of any wealthy nation. Finland is the only country in Europe that has driven homelessness down over decades rather than watched it climb.
They arrived there by almost opposite routes. Japan built at volume and kept building cheaply. Finland stopped asking people to earn a home before they were given one.
Australia has done neither. Every country counts homelessness differently, which makes cross-country comparisons unreliable. Still, these comparisons are important.
When we talk about successful models, Japan and Finland are named repeatedly, and for genuinely different reasons. Meanwhile, in Australia, 122,000 people were counted as homeless on census night in 2021, with 289,000 people supported by specialist homelessness services in 2024–2025. In January 2026, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare counted a record low of 2,481 people sleeping outdoors nationwide.
In 2003, the count recorded more than 25,000. Ten of Japan's 47 prefectures, its equivalent of states, now record none at all. That is a real achievement deserving of recognition, though it is often marked with an asterisk.
The Japanese count is a visual survey of people in streets, parks and stations and on riverbanks. It excludes anyone sleeping in a car, an internet cafe, a capsule hotel or a derelict building. Japan has not abolished housing insecurity, but what it has very nearly abolished is sleeping outdoors, the form of homelessness that can kill people through exposure.
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