Changing Characteristics of Public Housing Residents in Koto Ward, Tokyo

Abstract

Housing supply systems have a close relationship to the characteristics of residents, especially in the sub-market of public housing. Because there are strict regulations for applicants for public housing, local government mainly select tenants in regard to their income conditions. In Japan, public housing owned by municipal and prefectural governments in generally supplied for households which cannot afford to buy or rent their houses in private housing market. Japanese public housing consists of three types; Type 1 house for lower income households, Type 2 for the lowest income households (lower than Type 1) and Type 3 for households which have been displaced from redevelopment areas located in poor quality residential areas.
This paper aims to examine the change in characteristics of residents in public housing and to clarify the cause of this transformation process. For the former aim, the author used the age data from the National Census in 1970 and 1990, and for the latter aim, the author attempted to outline mechanisms responsible for the changing characteristics of residents. The study area is Koto ward in the Tokyo metropolitan area which is adjacent to the eastern part of CBD. It contains the second largest stock of public housing in the 23 wards of Tokyo. And there are many smaller factories and workshops, therefore the land use pattern is a mix of factories and workers' residential areas. After the mid-1950s', the local government in Koto ward supplied a large amount of public houses for many young households to cope with the serious housing shortage. The results may be summarized as follows.
Many younger households, with householders younger than 39 years old and children under 9, resided in public housing in 1970. But in 1990, the age structures of residents in public housing showed a different pattern. An extraordinary aging of residents appeared in some public housing. The same phenomenon has been observed in the case of the non suburban built-up areas of Hiroshima city except for the suburban area. Older people without their own transportation tend to avoid inconvenient suburban public housing. In the case of Koto ward, spatial differentiation of aging in public housing has not appeared because the study area is too small to research spatial differentiation and has the homogeneous characteristics of the inner city.
The causes of aging in public housing may be summarized as follows. First, may residents in public housing were long stayers. When their children grew up and took employment, many of them moved out of their parents' homes because the houses were too small to live together in. Therefore the size of household decreased, only the aged parents were left behind, since public housing is large enough for a couple or individual to live in, and is cheap to rent. The ratio of aging increased as the result of the increase in aged parents and the decrease in younger people.
Secondly, for welfare purposes, the Public Housing Act gives priority to lower income households. In accordance with the Act, the public housing department offers accommodation to lower income households, which contain many younger households, older and handicapped people. Most of them stay for long periods except for younger people and some of the older people who were allowed to move into vacant public housing for welfare purposes. Consequently serious and rapid aging occurred in some public housing. Thus the Public Housing Act induced the aging of residents. This mechanism is called “the housing trap”.
The aging in public housing has caused the accumulation of a specific social class which need welfare services. It is important to point out such serious aging in public housing and clarify its mechanism in order to resolve this social problem.