Tokyo's abandoned homes

[Oz_Paul]

An interesting article which appeared in the local papers.

 

 

http://www.domain.com.au/news/tokyos-abandoned-homes-20150824-gj6arl/

[railsquid]

Except it talks about Yokosuka, not Tokyo.

 

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that there's little incentive to move from the Tokyo area to a smaller town you're not going to get the advantages of a significantly larger house/garden (or if you do it'll be at the top of a steep hill or somewhere equally inconvenient) while suffering all the disadvantages of a longer commute and living in a gradually declining community with fewer facilities. And while you can buy a "house" cheaply, what you'll get is a small piece of land with a poorly-constructed/maintained Showa-era shack which would be condemned as sub-par in most other G7 countries, and which would require a lot of renovation, or better a complete new build, to be reasonably liveable.

[Nick_Burman]

Except it talks about Yokosuka, not Tokyo.

 

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that there's little incentive to move from the Tokyo area to a smaller town you're not going to get the advantages of a significantly larger house/garden (or if you do it'll be at the top of a steep hill or somewhere equally inconvenient) while suffering all the disadvantages of a longer commute and living in a gradually declining community with fewer facilities. And while you can buy a "house" cheaply, what you'll get is a small piece of land with a poorly-constructed/maintained Showa-era shack which would be condemned as sub-par in most other G7 countries, and which would require a lot of renovation, or better a complete new build, to be reasonably liveable.

 

A pity I don't know the lingo, othewise I would seriously consider putting my name up for one. The big Q is how much it would cost to have it refurbished...

 

Cheers NB

[Guest ___]

All right, found a spot to squat if I need to stay a few extra weeks, LOL.

 

“Tokyo could end up being surrounded by Detroits,” said Tomohiko Makino, a real estate expert who has studied the vacant-house phenomenon.

 

Ouch

Edited August 25, 2015 by 写真家
snakasm

[kvp]

The Yokosuka area was not that bad during the Showa era, especially if you worked there. These small patches are not really sellable, but if there was a mass property redevelopment, especially on the sea looking hillside areas, they could be all torn down and in place of around a dozen small homes, it's possible to build a nice american standard house. If you want to sell that, you'll have to redevelop the whole neighbourhood into similar higer class houses. The real problem is that the houses are in the middle of an old and nowdays mostly disused industrical area, which looks rather bad below any hillside development. The smaller communities that are a bit nearer to Tokyo and less industrial are doing fine however as there are two commuter lines right across the whole seaside area.

 

The Detroit example is actually happening everywhere else in Japan, except the Tokyo-Osaka downtowns. Even some of the new cities connected to the shinkansen network are listed as depopulated. This is like building high speed rail to Michigan central station.

 

However there are more and more homeless in the Tokyo downtown area and nobody thinks it would be a viable and really cheap solution to just convert some of these more distant abandoned communities into social housing and provide some kind of meaningful work in the old industrial areas. (it doesn't have to be profitable, nonprofit is ok, even if it's just vegetable gardening)

[bikkuri bahn]

However there are more and more homeless in the Tokyo downtown area

 

Really? Perhaps there is a shift from one district to another, but look at this:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/10/27/3583324/tokyo-homeless/

 

I think one thing is towns and cities need to be more proactive.  For example, the district of Tama Plaza, in Yokohama's Aoba Ward, Tokyu Real Estate has bought old homes built before upgraded earthquake codes were enacted in the early 1980's and refurbished them for young families.  It helps though that Tama Plaza is a fashionable place to live, being on a Tokyu rail line with good shopping and services.

[katoftw]

Cheap holiday house? haha

[Davo Dentetsu]

All right, found a spot to squat if I need to stay a few extra weeks, LOL.

 

“Tokyo could end up being surrounded by Detroits,” said Tomohiko Makino, a real estate expert who has studied the vacant-house phenomenon.

 

Ouch