A 62-year-old man is set to sue a Tokyo-based incorporated association set up to provide services for poor and unemployed people, claiming it actually preys on those it purports to help.

The lawyers preparing his filing suspect the association schemed to make money by filling apartment buildings with as many occupants as possible, regardless of their financial status, to boost expected rents and disguise their profitability before the buildings were resold.

The association offers services to refer affordable rental units to disadvantaged people and assist with their job searches.

The man, who was kicked out of the Tokyo-area apartment referred to him by the association, argues he did not receive help in getting a job despite paying for the service.

The association declined multiple requests for interviews by The Asahi Shimbun. None of the claims have been proven in court.

The association, based in Shinjuku Ward, was established in October 2020 to secure housing and provide job assistance to the needy, seniors and people with disabilities, according to registry information.

The association’s website said it offers information on apartments available for rent and advice on how to receive welfare benefits.

But about 30 people who sought the association’s services have filed grievances with support groups for socially vulnerable people, including the nonprofit Tenohashi, a group based in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district that assists homeless people, and the Anti-Poverty Network, a Tokyo citizens group aiding the impoverished. The grievances date to 2021.

The complainants range in age from their 20s to 70s.

According to Tenohashi, most of the rental referrals made by the association are in Tokyo’s Tama district and neighboring prefectures. It takes an hour or so to get there by train from the center of the capital, where jobs were available.

The complainants said few jobs were available in walking distance from where they lived, even if they tried to find one while receiving welfare relief.

Despite that they can find daily employment offers on their smartphones, they found it impossible to take on any work on the same day, or very early the next morning, due to the difficult travel access to central Tokyo.

“Living on the outskirts of Tokyo, without any personal connections with local communities, is unlikely to help them become self-reliant,” said Kenji Seino, who leads Tenohashi.

The man planning to sue the association was referred to a rental in Fussa on the outskirts of Tokyo, a train ride of one hour or so from the center of the capital, in June last year.

He lost his job at a company hit hard by the novel coronavirus pandemic and then became homeless, according to his lawyers.

The man learned about the association online and then paid for its “life rebuilding service” to get job referrals.

But the man stopped paying his rent in protest that his room was not repaired at his request, only to find himself locked out of the apartment one day with an external key.

He is set to demand about 2 million yen ($15,000) in damages from the association and a real estate company in Shinagawa Ward that owned the apartment building in a lawsuit to be filed at Tokyo District Court.

His lawyers believe the association may be teaming up with multiple real estate companies possessing properties in the Tokyo metropolitan area to temporarily occupy them with the needy, then resell them at inflated prices.

One example that suggests the association is using a poverty industry business model is an apartment building in Hamura, a city that takes about an hour by train from Shinjuku Station. The building was built in 1988, according to the registry information.

The ownership of the building was auctioned off to a real estate company in Saitama Prefecture in March 2021 after it had changed hands many times.

An unemployed man in his 20s moved into the apartment in spring 2021 after the association referred it to him. Most of the units were vacant when he moved in.

But all the units were occupied by the summer of that year, according to the man.

The Hamura city government said residents of the building, accompanied by association employees, began applying for welfare benefits in April.

The building’s ownership changed to a company that operates restaurants in Tokyo in August 2021.

The company sought to mitigate the drop in sales at its restaurants caused by the pandemic with rental incomes after seeing an ad touting a “fully occupied” apartment building in July.

All 27 rooms were occupied at the time of purchase and 19 of the occupants were receiving welfare benefits. Soon, the company saw a flurry of occupants move out, bringing the occupancy rate down to about 70 percent.

“I bought the apartment building because all the rooms were taken,” the company operator said. “I feel we were duped.”

The registry information shows the address for the Shinjuku branch of the real estate company that resold the apartment building ownership is the same as the association’s address.