low-income housing

The good landlord

Posted on by catforehead

In our previous post, we talked about rent relief, and how the Japanese government had expanded its assistance to at-risk renters after the onset of the pandemic. As a result, the number of approved applications in 2020 was 34 times the number approved the previous year, though, in the end, it may not be enough since the people who need the money have to apply anew every three months up to a total of 12 or 15 months. Groups that advocate for at-risk households have tried to convince the government to make the relief open-ended, but the current limits are in line with government policy regarding public assistance, which, as once outlined by former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, is made available after an individual had tapped their own individual resources, and then those of their “community.” Government aid is the last resort.

An article published by the Asahi Shimbun on Jan. 5 gives some idea of what kind of assistance the “community” might offer in these cases. The piece profiles a 42-year-old landlord named Tomoyuki Matsumoto, who owns about 80 rental units in Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. He rents the properties to people who may have difficulty finding places to live otherwise because they are poor and/or elderly. The article illustrates Matsumoto’s business model by describing one of his properties, a 3-story nagaya (town house) located in Daito, Osaka Prefecture, that’s more than 50 years old. The interior walls are traditional doheki (wattle and daub), the roof occasionally leaks when it rains, and the toilet sometimes overflows. The tenant, an 81-year-old widow who has resided there 3 years, doesn’t seem to mind these inconveniences because the rent is only ¥35,000 a month, which means she can live there on her national pension. Matsumoto shows up once every two months to collect the rent in person, which she finds very agreeable. As he tells the newspaper, having a personal connection with his tenants is very important to him, and as a result he responds to maintenance problems fairly promptly.

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Low priorities

Posted on by catforehead

DSCF2013It’s become an almost trite litany in the media: the poor become poorer and the rich richer, with the middle class mostly shrinking and absorbed by the former. The conventional narrative says that free market capitalism makes this so, as governments in the free world become “smaller” and thus less likely to regulate economic functions. But more fundamental to the issue is the idea that priorities are shifting away from the poor.

An article in the Dec. 3 Nihon Keizai Shimbun reports on a survey completed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in September and just released to the public. The survey collected data from local governments regarding public buildings, including apartments and schools. One of the more startling statistics is 12,251, which represents the total number of these buildings that local governments throughout Japan, both prefectural and municipal, want to tear down. The estimated cost of this mass demolition would be ¥403.9 billion, a huge burden for municipalities, most of which are cash-strapped anyway. But the cost of maintaining these buildings is probably higher, since it’s an ongoing expense. The reasons local governments want to tear down these buildings is simple: they’re old–the average age is 41 years–and the population is expected to continue decreasing. This number doesn’t include buildings that will be renovated or replaced after they are destroyed. It’s only buildings that will be gone for good. At the time the survey was conducted, 40 percent of these buildings were in use, while 47 percent were not in use at all and were thus shuttered. As far as plans for demolition go, 32 percent will be torn down “within a year or two” while the fate of 41 percent was “not known” at the time.

It’s a huge number, but if you’re at all familiar with construction trends in Japan it’s probably not shocking. Just walk through any business district in Tokyo and marvel at how many new skyscrapers are going up, replacing other buildings that were put up only thirty or so years ago. Buildings in Japan are notoriously short-lived, and, of course, outside of the large cities there is even less reason for keeping buildings that no longer serve a function. Populations and tax bases continue to shrink, so there is no need to maintain a school that has no students, or a public housing project that’s only 30 percent full. Read More