Industrial Workers of the World

"Those left homeless by the bushfires are able to access emergency accommodation through Office of Housing staff at the relief centres in their area, or by calling the accommodation line on 1800 006 468. 600 units of public housing across Victoria will be made available for those made homeless by the bushfires....UP to 2,000 bushfire victims are to be accommodated on Australian Defence Force (ADF) bases Up to 1,200 beds in communal accommodation would be made available at the army base at Puckapunyal, near Seymour, close to the fire-affected areas. 150 beds would be made available at Maygar Barracks, near Broadmeadows in Melbourne. The RAAF base at East Sale, in Gippsland, will provide accommodation for up to 500 people, including 150 places with disabled access. Another 200 could be accommodated at the navy base, HMAS Cerberus, on the Mornington Peninsula. Another RAAF base at Point Cook, southwest of Melbourne, will be able to provide accommodation for 150 people. until better accommodation can be found.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/emergency-accommodation-hotline-for-bushfire-homeless-20090210-82x9.html

Those left homeless by the "global fire sale" of Capitalism may have to just squat where they are, or get together with others and occupy empty flats, houses, convert empty offices, churches, work places into homes..something to do while awaiting the local real estate agents and landlords to open up their empties for free ?

" Facing foreclosure? Don't leave. Squat "

Amy Goodman Wednesday, February 4, 2009 Marcy Kaptur of Ohio is the longest-serving Democratic congresswoman in U.S. history. Her district, stretching along the shore of Lake Erie from west of Cleveland to Toledo, faces an epidemic of home foreclosures and 11.5 percent unemployment. That heartland region, the Rust Belt, had its heart torn out by the North American Free Trade Agreement, with shuttered factories and struggling family farms. Kaptur led the fight in Congress against NAFTA. Now, she is recommending a radical foreclosure solution from the floor of the U.S. Congress: "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/04/EDK215MNA0.DTL&hw=Amy+goodman&sn=001&sc=1000

Bruce Marks of the Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America is taking the fight to the homes of the banks' CEOs. Last October, as the TARP bailout was shaping up to benefit Wall Street and not Main Street, NACA blockaded the entrance of mortgage giant Fannie Mae until it got a meeting with executives there. Now NACA is working with Fannie Mae to restructure mortgages. Marks is organizing a nationwide, three-day "Predator's Tour," going to the CEOs' homes to demand meetings with them. He told me: "This is what we're going to do with thousands of homeowners, go to their (the CEOs') home and say: 'I want you to meet my family. I want you to see who you're foreclosing on.' ... If they're going to take our homes, we're going to go to their homes, and we're going to tell them, 'No more.' "

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Job cuts swell ranks of homeless in Japan By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer Monday, February 16, 2009 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/02/16/international/i090919S99.DTL

Sadanori Suzuki 26-years-old, lost his job at a car factory in December, and by mid-January he was kicked out of the dorm run by his employer. He moved from Internet cafes — which often have private rooms and double as flop houses — to "capsule" hotels, which are coffin-like individual compartments just for sleeping. But within two weeks he was nearly broke and out on the street. He found his way to a Shinto shrine in Kawagoe, a Tokyo suburb, where he planned to take temporary refuge. But the worship hall was locked. Exasperated, Suzuki set fire on the shrine, then called police from a nearby pay phone and turned himself in.

When he was arrested, last week, he had only 10 yen (11 cents).

On Monday, the government reported that the Japanese economy shrank at its fastest rate in 35 years in the fourth quarter — at an annual pace of 12.7 percent — and shows no signs of reversing course anytime soon. It is more than triple the 3.8 percent annualized contraction in the U.S. in the same quarter. According to the latest government estimates, released last month, some 125,000 part-time workers will lose their jobs by March. Labor officials cannot follow what happens to all those who lose their employment, but of the 45,800 who have been tracked, the government found 2,700 became homeless.

Private estimates go much higher — to upward of 400,000 new jobless by the end of next month — and say more than 30,000 of them will become homeless, nearly double the country's nationwide homelessness figure. By the official count, the number of homeless is 16,000 and has been slightly decreasing for several years.

Nearly one-third of the Japanese work force is made up of temporary workers, including 3.8 million bottom-tier workers who are sent countrywide to provide labor on demand. A key to Japan's fragile economic recovery has been the explosion in temporary employment agencies, brokers who allow corporations to take on labor without having to pay benefits — and then unload workers at will. Another factor is "freeters" — a growing segment of young people who choose to move from one part-time job to the next. Independent union organizer Makoto Kawazoe said temporary workers are given low-paying, tough factory jobs, with an average basic monthly salary of about 150,000 yen ($1,650), barely enough to make ends meet. When they are laid off and evicted from employer-provided housing, they often have no savings.

Three-quarters of Japan's temporary workers earn less than 2 million yen ($21,740) a year. Japan's unemployment rate jumped in December to 4.4 percent, up 0.5 points from a month earlier. That means 2.7 million people are out of jobs, up 390,000 from the previous year. The number of people on government welfare has risen by more than 46,000 since last year. In Tokyo and major cities across the country, welfare rolls rose 35 percent in January alone.

Even so, the situation has gotten so bad that some Tokyo neighborhood offices have set up temporary showers for those who need to clean up before resuming their job search. Over the New Year holidays, a tent village set up by a group of labor union members in Tokyo's Hibiya Park was almost instantly filled, prompting the Labor Ministry to open a nearby public gymnasium to accommodate the overflow. Hundreds came from out of town when word got around. The government later made available vacant public housing for 4,000 people in several locations in Tokyo through a relief package of financial aid and rent.

From December, Toyota has also started allowing temporary workers to stay at company-run dormitories for up to a month without charge. Before that, a temp worker had only three days to pack up and leave.

MORE http://www.homeless.org.au/news/australia.htm