Abstract
Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, the housing lease program for disaster victims supplied over 60,000 private rental
houses as temporary housing. This large number of houses was rented in a short time and over a wide area. As such, grasping the
situation of leased housing is difficult. To examine actual conditions of houses and households covered by this program in Iwate
prefecture, this study analyzed information contained in 4,000 rental agreements. The following results were obtained. (1)
Acquisition of houses progressed rapidly in tsunami-damaged coastal areas. Residents acquired old and low-priced detached
houses in the same city without using real estate agents. (2) Residents who could not find rental houses in their city during the early
stages had to move to other cities close to their city or the inland area far away from their hometown. (3) A quarter of the residents
left their leased housing about two years after the earthquake. Residents who acquired during the early stages, large families that
lived in inadequate houses, and residents who moved to other cities began to leave leased houses at an earlier time.
