Study on Housing Affordability and Rental Assistance Policy

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 23760594
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Town planning/Architectural planning
• Research Institution: Ritsumeikan University
• Principal Investigator: SHIKI Kimiko 立命館大学, 政策科学部, 准教授 (10512725)
• Project Period (FY): 2011-04-28 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 住宅問題 / 家賃補助 / 住宅政策 / 居住費負担 / アフォーダビリティ / 低家賃住宅 / 民間賃貸住宅

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study investigates recent changes in housing problems among the low-income population (working-age poor renters, in particular) in two major metropolitan areas in Japan, Tokyo and Osaka. My findings show that classic dilapidated rental housing, old wooden-structure multi-family housing without living facilities, has rapidly been disappearing or largely occupied by poor elderly households. In contrast, the young working-age urban poor have been increasingly living in better conditioned housing but facing the new housing problem: higher housing cost burden. This study also examined the housing and social welfare/labor policies for the working-age urban poor. The housing policy is opting out of the new construction of public housing.　The social welfare policy/labor policies considers housing problems as labor problem. The affordable housing problems are emerging in big cities though they are hardly recognized as critical agenda in current policy discussion for the poor in Japan.

Free Research Field

住宅政策