zMessages from Departments and Centers of NILIM   

Toward Housing Stock Management for aMature Society

PhotoOTAKE Ryo, Director
Housing Department(Key words) Housing stock, housing market, prolonging service lifetime, energy conservation, effects of housing
measures, renovation
1. Is housing social infrastructure?
Homes are, needless to say, an element of the threenecessary preconditions for life: clothing, food, andshelter. They are required by everyone, normally infamily units, as places for human life. But unlike theother elements necessary for human life (clothing andfood), a home is immovably anchored to the land, islarge, is expensive, and can be used for a long time.
And it is not sufficient to simply provide enough for
all households; it is extremely vital where each islocated (location), how large it is (size) and how
comfortable it is (performance).
On the other hand, a home is not used by a large
undetermined number of people, but it is occupied
exclusively by a specified household, and homeowners include few public bodies such as those
operating public housing; an overwhelming majority,
both occupant owned and rented, are privately owned.
Most homes are, similarly, constructed by privatebuilders and distributed mainly through transactions
on the private market, by real estate dealers, etc. In
this sense, housing has a strong character as a private
asset which is owned by the private sector anddistributed on the market.
But housing has special features; it is fixed to theground, is large and expensive and it is used for a longtime once it has been constructed, so it is difficult for
housing to respond flexibly to social change broughtby new human needs and technological revolutions, asother products can. The housing stock now includes
approximately 57 million homes, and in recent years,
about 1 million new homes have been constructedannually, so even if the level of new housing improves,
it is impossible for the overall form of the housing
stock to change.
Consequently, in an era when the population soared
and was concentrated in large cities for example,
resolving housing problems caused by an absolute
shortage of homes became a major challenge. This
increase was followed by quantitative provision of afull supply, but a period when it was impossible tomeet size, location, and price needs continued. A
classic example of this were tiny high-rent homes inhousing estates accompanied by long-distancecommuting: a situation referred to as “far, costly, andnarrow” housing. In recent years, the movement toprovide barrier-free housing has not kept up with therise in the elderly population, and seismic retrofittingof homes has achieved little progress.
Considered this way, most individual homes are notpublicly constructed, managed, and utilized, but if theoverall housing stock of Japan is not constituted in aform needed to meet social needs, it will not function
appropriately through the market. Thus, housing is notsocial infrastructure in the narrow sense, but is a social
asset which is often included in policies which
integrate housing and social infrastructure.
2. Housing problems in the second half of thetwentieth century
Policy approaches are necessary in order for theprivate stock of homes which are places for private
life to form part of the overall social stock. During thepostwar years when there was an overwhelming
shortage of housing, high volume building
construction was the policy challenge. Then as
population was concentrated in large cities, it wasnecessary to not only ensure a quantitative supply, but
to provide new urban neighborhoods as places forhuman life, in housing estates or new towns forexample. And when the quantitative pressure ended,
the major challenge was providing larger homes, andthe target was a level of housing with floor area suited
to household size.
As means to overcome such challenges, in additionto systems such as municipal housing, housing
supplied by the Urban Development Corporation andother directly supplied by public bodies, and theGovernment Housing Loan Corporation which offers
long-term low interest financing, the government
enacts housing construction plans which stipulate
medium-term housing construction goals, tosystematically supply housing. Eight Housing
Construction Five-year Programs (1965 to 2005) havebeen enacted and changing housing problems havebeen accompanied by a gradual shift of their priority
from ensuring quantities of housing to improving thelevel of housing.
3. Housing challenges in the first half of thetwenty-first century
A changing trend seen in Japanese society as thetwentieth century ends and the twenty-first century
begins is a shift from growth to maturation and fromzMessages from Departments and Centers of NILIM
flow to stock. The population has stopped rising andbegun to fall, and the same trend will soon appear inhouseholds. And in the field of economic growth,stable growth is now more realistic than high-speed
growth seen in the past. The population is also beingtransformed by a rapidly falling birth rate and aging ofsociety. The flow of the population to large cities hasslowed, but the absolute depopulation of outlying
regions is advancing.
At the same time, daily life needs are advancing anddiversifying accompanied by a boom in highly
convenient city center housing. Concern for safety ishigh as a result of continuous large earthquakes andthe problem of seismic design frauds. Environmental
problems have become a topic of great interest, andattention has begun to focus on energy conservation
performance. Consequently, it is necessary to form afull-scale stock with high location, size, andperformance levels. In order to smoothly provide
private homes with a variety of properties to people
who demand them, the market environment must beimproved and suitable compensation paid to theelderly and other people who require public support.
In light of such trends, the government’s housing
construction program has been replaced by the Basic
Program for Home Life (from 2006). Its goals are notspecific numbers of new homes, but improving theoverall performance of the housing stock, andpromoting the renovation and redistribution of oldhomes. The direct goals are the formation andmanagement of a public stock.
4. Housing research: present state and directions
The research challenges we face have changed in
response to the state of new housing policies.
The initial goal was popularizing long-term superior
housing—building good homes, caring for themproperly, and using them carefully for a long time—inorder to form a full-scale housing stock. In response,
the NILIM has, as part of “development of multiple
generation use type housing and housing land
formation and management technologies”, taken
pace-setting initiatives concerning fundamental
performances necessary to construct housing which
can withstand long-term use, management systems,
renovation methods etc., but it will also researchtechnologies and systems which have not yet beenadequately established and promote these throughsummarizing the results in written guidelines (the2009to2011
Comprehensive
Technology
Development Project is now in progress).
It is also necessary to increase the percentage ofoverall housing stock which is housing endowed withbasic performances which can meet social demands,
for seismic resistance, energy conservation, andbarrier free etc. Taking energy conservation
performance as an example, legal systems have been
gradually strengthened, and newly constructedhousing provides a higher level in this area, butmeasures for the vast existing stock of housing
remains a challenge. As “Research on energy
consumption performance according to class ofhousing” we wish to clarify the effectiveness ofenergy saving improvements according to construction
period, scale, structure etc. of existing housing inparticular, and to contribute to its promotion (plannedfor 2010 to 2012).
The effectiveness of such measures must beevaluated. And in order to clarify the degree of
inducement effectiveness of policies extending fromthe government level to local government levelaccording to regional characteristics in regard to theentire housing stock, which consists of an
overwhelming share of private housing and tinyminority of public housing, we are undertaking
Research on Methods of Evaluating the Effectivenessof Housing Policies According to Regional
Characteristics (2008 to 2010, in progress).
It is predicted that new housing (includingreconstructed housing) will eventually achieve a very
high level, but measures focused on the existing stock
are indispensable to transform the overall stock into
more desirable form and use it more effectively.
Japanese housing includes more new homes than in
the advanced countries of Europe and America, but it
is extremely far behind these regions in terms of theresale and renovation of old homes. There is also an
insufficient supply of statistics which accurately
clarify the performance of the overall housing stock. A
system to appropriately evaluate the performance ofexisting housing and to predict the effectiveness andcost of improvements must be developed. Other major
technical challenges are protecting consumers throughquality assurance and information provision, andintroducing housing stock management for a maturesociety.
In conclusion, because many homes are privately
owned, not only must the achievements of our housing
research be reflected directly in government policies,
but must also contribute to the private sector housing
market. If this conforms with the direction ofgovernment policies, it will contribute indirectly to itspolicies.