To assess the potential for care-taking of vacant houses by local residents in an area where traditional wooden houses remain, I conducted a questionnaire survey of residents living along and in the vicinity of the “T Street” in order to assess their awareness of vacant houses and their attitude towards care-taking of these houses. A total of 98 persons responded to the questionnaire survey, which was conducted in January 2016.
Prior to conducting the survey, I determined that approximately 13% of the houses along the street were vacant. Of these, around one half were considered to be abandoned, in the sense that no caretaker had entered the house. Although no buildings were on the verge of collapse, about 30% of the houses had weeds growing at their entrances, and the vacant houses appeared to be in need of maintenance.
Among the respondents, there was a 50:50 split between men and women and the mean age was 68.2 years; many of the respondents were from households consisting of elderly couples. More than 80% of the respondents were involved in town planning activities. The respondents responded that they would like as many residents as possible to be involved in town planning activities. The respondents are very concerned about the increase in vacant houses that has occurred in recent years throughout Japan. This concern arose from realizing that the number of vacant houses in their neighborhoods has increased over the last three to five years. The main concerns about vacant houses were “untidiness of shrubbery and weeds,” “risk that houses may collapse,” and “degradation of landscape and scenery.”
Regarding the willingness of local residents to share care-taking responsibilities in the neighborhood, the survey revealed that more people were “not willing to cooperate” than were “willing to cooperate”. Respondents were particularly apprehensive about the technical aspects associated with tasks such as “checking and inspecting for leaks inside houses,” “pruning shrubbery,” and “inspecting external walls and roofs for damage from the outside.” Respondents were strongly opposed to entering houses in order to “clean and tidy up interiors and discard disused articles,” Conversely, activities on which a relatively high number of respondents were “willing to cooperate” included “simple cleaning of entranceways and gardens,” “opening windows to ventilate interiors,” and “weeding of entranceways and gardens.” Thus, these are all care-taking activities that local residents could be expected to get involved in. Next, regarding the willingness to accept support from local residents in the event that one's own house was to become vacant, there were more unwilling respondents than willing ones. This reveals a strong resistance to having people entering the house to perform work. Still, there is potential for local residents to provide support by performing simple tasks from outside such houses.
The findings of the study showed that, in practice, it is generally somewhat difficult to get local residents to take care of vacant houses due to apprehension about the physical effort and technical aspects of the work required depending on the task, and also because of residents' reticence to entering houses or sites. However, residents are willing to cooperate on some activities, so there is potential for getting them to get involved in simple outdoor tasks.
