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. 

As it stands, most elderly renters do not have much money to begin with. If their only income is the national pension, then they may have to find part-time jobs to survive. For that reason, welfare recipients have an easier time of finding housing because the amounts are guaranteed by the government. 

But the main reason for rejection is not inability to pay but, as already mentioned, the fact that landlords are afraid of someone dying on the premises. Depending on how long a dead body remains in a dwelling, it could cost as much as ¥1 million to restore it to its original state. Of course, the likelihood of such a death going undiscovered for a long time is very small, but whenever it happens it tends to get mentioned in the news, so landlords would just as soon avoid the possibility altogether, and there is no law specifically saying they can’t discriminate against the elderly—or foreigners or single mothers or couples with children or LGBTQ persons or disabled individuals. In fact, in a different article that recently appeared in Magazine9, reporter Mihoko Kobayashi wrote that people who fall into these categories will often use a cover person. Single mothers, for instance, are advised by realtors to get their ex-husbands to sign the rental agreement to make things smoother.

Also, elderly renters are more likely to be evicted, even though though it’s still relatively difficult to evict a tenant in Japan. Spa! reports that wooden apartment buildings, which are more likely to take in lower income and elderly tenants, are only built to last 50 years, so people who live there can be evicted when the building’s life is over. According to the land ministry, there are some 2.8 million rental units in wooden apartment buildings whose occupants are over 40 years old. 

This problem has been evident to the authorities since the 1990s, but while some measures have been enacted to address it, it is still difficult for elderly people to find rental housing. In 2017, the Housing Safety Net Law was revised to help local governments fund assistance for people who need help with rental housing, including seniors, but landlords can still refuse old people if they want to. Local governments and NGOs have also stepped up efforts to check on people living alone to prevent them from dying alone, but as the Edogawa incident shows, it doesn’t always work, and the publicity over this particular instance of bureaucratic negligence will only reinforce landlords’ determination not to rent to seniors. 

The fact that Japan has millions of vacant housing units is especially frustrating to senior welfare advocates, according to Kobayashi. Such advocates usually accompany seniors to welfare offices to help them apply for assistance that will then make it easier to get housing, but the resistance on the part of private landlords seems to become more stubborn year after year. Apparently, leaving a unit vacant is preferable to renting it out to an elderly person, even one who has a guaranteed income. 

The most obvious solution is to build more public housing, but, in fact, the number of public housing units is falling because local governments aren’t building any new ones. Another solution is for the authorities to help landlords restore apartments where people have died, and, in fact, landlords can take out insurance to pay for just such an eventuality, but, again, it’s easier just to refuse to rent to seniors. 

Correction: The original post referred to a bulletin by NHK, which said that the deceased had owned his residence, but, in fact, he rented it.