An article in the July 1 Asahi Shimbun reported on a police investigation of a staff member of Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward’s public welfare department who was suspected of “abandoning a dead body.” Usually, when police make such an accusation, it’s a preliminary stop toward a charge of murder, but this case is very different. 

According to the article, a 65-year-old man died in his Edogawa home in January. A caregiver who regularly visited the man discovered the body on January 10 and called a physician at the clinic that dispatched the caregiver. The doctor went to the residence and confimed that the man was dead and, following official procedures, reported the death to the relevant case worker in the ward’s welfare department, since the deceased had been receiving public assistance. 

But while the case worker later acknowledged that he had received the doctor’s report, apparently he did nothing. On March 27, an agent of a rental supply organization visited the deceased’s home to pick up some equipment that had been lent to the man through the welfare program and found that the body was still there two-and-a-half months after being reported. In trying to explain this lapse in procedure, the case worker said they had been overwhelmed with work and had simply kept putting off the matter of the dead body. It should be noted, however, that this worker wasn’t the only person aware that the man had died. After receiving the doctor’s report, the case worker immediately informed their superior about the death so that the ward would stop its public assistance to the man. Following an investigation, the police said they sent their file to prosecutors, but apparently the case worker wasn’t charged. When contacted by the Asahi, the head of the ward’s welfare department said they purposely did not publicize the incident and would have nothing to say until a news conference scheduled for July 3, which is today. 

According to subsequent media reports the deceased had been renting, which makes the story even more bizarre: When they didn’t receive a monthly payment, why didn’t the landlord check on the tenant?

In any case, the story will likely only reinforce an unfortunate trend that has been on the rise for several decades and which was described in a June 16 post on the Daily Spa!. Landlords have become increasingly averse to renting to people “over 60” because they are afraid that elderly tenants will die on the premises, thus causing them considerable expense in preparing the residence to be reoccupied.

The main thrust of the article is that more and more seniors are having difficulties finding rental properties that will accept them. Many real estate agents for rental properties don’t even allow elderly people through the front door because it’s too much trouble. Spa! says that the general image in Japan is that the elderly are all homeowners, but, in fact, according to a government white paper, one-in-three people living in single-person households who are over 65 do not own the homes they live in. And this portion is increasing. As one agent who specializes in helping senior renters find dwellings told the magazine, most conventional realtors won’t even talk to elderly renters “no matter how much money they have.” The agent said that according to his company’s in-house survey one out of four elderly people say they’ve been rejected for rental housing as least once, and of these 13 percent said they’ve been rejected more than 5 times. 

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