The Issues and Prospects of Housing Measures in the Super-Aged Society

In Japan, in many cases it is difficult for the elderly to rent standard housing. For this reason, the outfitting of housing for the elderly has been advancing, but even if facilities such as nursing facilities and senior citizens homes or residences such as housing for the elderly with home-care services provided advance, it is currently difficult to respond to the rapidly increasing number of elderly people. Furthermore, support is also required for repairs, etc. to homes for the class of elderly who own their own homes , which makes up a large percentage of housing for the elderly. The biggest problem is the elderly who have low incomes. Low-income people below a certain standard should be able to use public assistance, but the class who do not quite qualify for such assistance need more than a housing safety net to support them. There is also a need for efforts toward effective utilization of existing housing stock such as unoccupied houses. In 1978 the rate of unoccupied houses was 7.6%, rising to 13.1% in 2008 with 4,126,800 of these houses being rental housing, which is more than half of the total number of unoccupied houses, 7,567,900. However, despite this plethora of unoccupied houses, there are still many landlords who say they do not want to rent to the elderly due to a fear of the risk of unattended deaths, accidents in the houses, and non-payment of rent. It is also necessary to create an environment where it is easy for the elderly to rent through publicly supported rent loan guarantees, creation of a system where local people look out for each other, etc. It is vital to conduct regional development with people working together in addition to preparing housing to enable the elderly to continue their lives in the area with peace of mind.