Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[SN]

Comfortable houses------Japanese government should drasticaly change its policy

It is houses that residents in big cities feel unsatisfied with. Houses are expensive, small, far from workplaces and in addition not durable.Although the income per person of Japanese people is the highest in the world, they cannot feel the quality of life as much as people in Europe or US. That surely comes from poverty of houses.

In order to get rid of the expensive price of houses, the government has made efforts to expand the tax system in which tax payers with housing loan are treated well. In next fiscal year, this tax system should basically be maintained. But its purpose is handle with the housing problem ,not to rise the economic condition .

Therefore, for maintaining it, it is necessary to do a partial reexamination such as not applying it to people who earn more than a certain income. But it won't work if that tax system rather stir up people to get an excessive home loan. The double hardships of recent business people come from the huge costs for education of their children and the huge home loan. Business people who have two children who are receiving higher education and have home loan are being gotten rid of almost half of their income. They don't afford to care about the quality of their lives.

In that sense, the government's current support is not enough because it supports only people who want to buy one's own houses and because it gives a priority on the convenience of the suppliers as in the past. It is also an important housing policy to respond to the needs to rent a house rather than buy it.

Some measures to activate the market for rental houses such as the revision of the law for rental houses have been under operation. But why has it not resulted as enough as it was expected? While the market of the rental houses which are for foreigners and cost more expensive than 1million yen a month has expanded, the market of the rental houses in good quality for families with children has not been a wide variety. Due to the low social sense of private dealers, the market of one-room apartment in down town of Tokyo has been a wide variety.

It is a wisdom for surviving in the aging society with declining birth rate to reconstruct one's house instead of building new one. The market of reconstrution in Japan is just only 10% of of the investment for housing. It is by far smaller than one in western countries, which is 40-60% of the investment for housing. Building firmly and reparing properly will make it possible to spend a comfortable life. Recently TV advertisement "House of 100 years" has been on. For that, durable houses and the system to support them are necessary. Government and housing industry have to drastically change their way of thinking in past.

The time when people can own a few houses rather than one house will come in the near future. It will be possible to own one's houses both in downtown and suburb, or both in suburb and rural area, or in two countries. Or it will be possible to change one's habitation every week, every season, every year. To setup laws to make it possible to have various choises is necessary for housing policy in the global days

The housing policy of Japanese government came from public employees' houses. The reexamination of that shouldn't be excluded. They may be abolished except for in the exceptional area like isolated islands. Although public officers' daily hard works should be respected, this is a different problem.

Public officers' residence system which has succeeded to the remains of the Edo era should be abolished and sold as national property. Now is the time when housing policy should aim at improving houses in quality instead of in quantity. For that, more drastic change from government which has supported the housing policy into private sector is necessary.

[BakaGaijin]

You know. I'm going to be living in Japan within the next 4-5 years so I'm pretty sure I'll just stick with an apartment.
_________________

I'm Kevin Tillman.
Japanese Exchange and Teaching ALT

[SN]

will u stay in a Gesthouse-sytle apartment? you know,it is difficult for people from abroad to find out a good apartment in Japan. And in addition, key money and huge deposit money you need is a sort of a barrier.
Good luck.

[BakaGaijin]

Eto... I will try. But I think the JET program and ESL programs have housing, I may be wrong... Oh well. I'll figure it out when I get there. Heh. I like living on the fly.
_________________

I'm Kevin Tillman.
Japanese Exchange and Teaching ALT