Tokyo’s social housing blocks are becoming de facto retirement homes. In an attempt to stimulate the housing market, the government tried to guide the young generation of workers away from public housing and into private housing. It revised the Public Housing Act, making public housing more accessible for elderly or disabled people. Yet another unintended consequence is that Tokyo’s social housing blocks have become the focal point for a phenomenon that has obsessed the national media: kodokushi, or “solitary deaths”. “Yet even now, public housing is ageing – and it will only get worse.”As for Tanaka, he is determined to remain cheerful.

Source: The Guardian June 11, 2019 09:32 UTC