Still in Shabby Houses

Temporary houses for sufferers of Great East Japan Earthquake still remain in everywhere in Tohoku area, even after four years from the devastation. It is quite later than in Great Hanshin Earthquake twenty years ago. Main reason is significant delay in construction of permanent cooperative houses. Some people feel comfortable to live in small and cold temporary house. It is obvious that the government is responsible for that.

According to the report of Yomiuri Shimbun, there are fifty-two thousand doors of temporary houses still remaining in Tohoku. Less than one percent of temporary houses have been removed. The residents have lost their home in great tsunami or evacuated from their hometown because of high radiation emitted by broken First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. If one could find a good place to live and had enough money to build new house, he or she can leave the temporary house. Otherwise, they need to wait for construction of permanent house built by local government.

There are two reasons of delay of building permanent houses. One is laziness of bureaucrats. When local governments tried to find place for building new cooperative houses on the land far and high from coastline to avoid devastation of great tsunami next time, the key was how to collect agreements from landowners, some of who were missing for a long time. In some cases, the landowners had been missing from the nineteenth century. National government did not allow local government to confiscate those lands, regarding it as violation of property rights. The restriction was eased by political initiative of lawmakers last year.

Another reason is economic policy by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, or Abenomics. His policy brought cheap yen against foreign currency, raising the price of importing materials necessary for building permanent houses. Tokyo Olympic in 2020 accelerated shortage of building materials and workers. In Tohoku, there appeared a number of examples, in which contract bid for permanent houses failed, being afraid of additional cost brought by material price hike between the time of contract and actual beginning of construction.

In the time of Hanshin Great Earthquake, thirty-two percent of temporary houses were removed and eighty percent of permanent houses were built within four years. Only eighteen percent of permanent houses were finished in Tohoku area at the time of the end of January this year. Nevertheless, the national government is considering no extension of the concentrated reconstruction period ending FY 2015. According to the poll by Yomiuri, seventy-one percent of the people in Japan thought the period should be extended, making clear contrast from the recognition of the government.