One of the Aso administration’s economic initiatives that was retained by the Democratic Party of Japan when it took over the government last year was an allowance for people who had lost their housing as a direct result of having lost their jobs, because, in most cases, the place they were living in was either owned or subsidized by their employers. The DPJ plan originally earmarked ¥70 billion for this allowance, with an additional ¥30 billion for it in the new supplemental budget. Read More

Six of the ten elderly people who died in a fire in a Gunma Prefecture nursing care facility last March had been sent to the facility by the Sumida Ward welfare office. Since the fire, the press has talked a lot about this practice of sending poor old people out of cities, where they can’t afford public facilities, to rural areas where the land values and thus the facilities themselves are cheaper. The Tokyo government has carried out an investigation into how to solve this problem, and they’ve come up with an idea.

The Tokyo government wants to increase the number of single rooms in so-called “care houses” by 2,400. Care houses are privately run housing complexes where single seniors–meaning people over 60 years of age–live by themselves. The facilities have baths and serve meals. The Tokyo government has found that rent for these care houses is prohibitively expensive since land agency regulations state that each room of a care house must be at least 20 square meters. The Tokyo government estimates that a 20 square meter room costs about ¥180,000, which is beyond the means of the government itself if it is footing the bill for indigent seniors. So they have asked the land ministry to reduce the minimum standard to 7 square meters, which is the size of a 4.5-tatami room. This, the government estimates, would cost about ¥100,000. In other words, you pay about half for a room that is only one-third as big.

As of 2007 there were only 259 care houses in all of Japan comprising 86,000 resident seniors. Fifty were in Tokyo.

According to the government, new housing starts in 2009 were the lowest they’ve been in 45 years. At 788,410 units, it was also the first time since 1967 that the number of new housing starts fell below a million, and the 27.9 percent year-on-year drop was the highest since 1974.

Meanwhile, the used housing and reform markets are doing quite well. The used housing sales company Livita, a subsidiary of Tokyo Electric, recently told Asahi Shimbun that about a year ago they noticed a large spike of interest in older homes that has only increased since then. Part of Livita’s business is to buy company housing complexes that are not longer occupied and convert them for sale. A potential buyer chooses a unit and then instructs the company as to how he or she wants it to be remodeled. Read More