Many of the victims who lost their houses in the Great East Japan Earthquake relocated and moved into temporary houses from the shelter in the process of the recovery. However, the intentions regarding the recovery of their houses are said to have changed as time passes. This study, therefore, aims to clarify how the victims’ intentions changed concerning the method and place of their housing recovery in Ofunato city. Regarding the recovery method, the results of the survey are summarized in the following four points; 1) although “No-Answer” accounted for approximately half in the initial stage, victims gradually decided their intentions. 2) Various changes of the intentions were observed from “Housing reconstruction on their own” to “Collective relocation for disaster prevention” or from “Private rental housing” to “Disaster restoration public housing”, for example, until they were finalized. 3) Not a few households decided their intentions just before the closing of the temporary housing. Regarding the recovery place, the results are summarized as follows; 1) the rate of decline in the number of households was low in “City center” where was highly convenient. 2) Although the victims temporarily resided away from the district where they used to live due to the disaster, many of them returned to the original areas. 3) The number of households relocated inland areas was approximately half of the total number of those affected.
The transition of such intentions can be divided into the following three phases. The first phase is the “intention decision phase”, which generally corresponds to the post-disaster period until 2013. At this time, the contents of the recovery projects and victim support were finalized, and information on that was provided to the victims through the briefing sessions held many times. The second phase is the “intention change phase”, which corresponds to 2012-2015, partly overlapping with the first phase. In this time period, the intention determined initially was change due to changes in social conditions and in implementation status of reconstruction projects. In particular, the changes in intention occurred such as from "Housing reconstruction on their own" to "Collective relocation for disaster prevention", which were considered to be caused by soaring land prices, from "Collective relocation for disaster prevention" to "Housing reconstruction on their own", which were considered to be caused by project delays, and from "Inland area" to "City area", which were considered to be due to convenience and high habitability. The third phase is the “final decision phase”, when the household delayed the decision-making made the final decision with the closure of the temporary housing. Such households were mainly those who had been waiting for the land prices and construction costs to stop rising those who changed their intention from “No-Answer” to “Housing reconstruction on their own", and those who had been staying in temporary houses because of the burden of public housing rent who changed their intention from “No-Answer” to “Disaster restoration public housing”.
From the above, the authors suggested the following four points to the policy sector; 1) importance of the step-by-step grasp of the victims’ intentions, 2) importance of early determination of the recovery project and victim support framework, 3) importance of the presentation of realistic construction schedules, 4) importance of prompting decision making to undecided temporary housing residents.
