Housing and reconstruction over the five years after the 2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

Abstract

In this chapter, we would like to discuss the current situation 5 years after the GEJE, mainly from the viewpoint of housing reconstruction. There are 160,000 people who were evacuated from their hometowns still without having their own houses, and 50,000 people living in prefabricated or wooden temporary housing. Three types of temporary housing were provided, namely, prefab housing, wooden housing and rental-apartment housing. The prefab temporary housing had many problems in terms of quality of life and cost. The wooden temporary housing was a new innovation and had good quality and low cost; additionally, their construction in each damaged area with local materials and local workers was helpful to the local economy. The victims welcomed the temporary rental apartments and housing, but the system had a few problems related to the process of assignment. There are two ways to get permanent housing after temporary housing, one is through the reconstruction of public housing and the other is self-reconstruction. The public-housing completion rate is 60% of the suggested plan. While the public housing system is very important for low-income victims, we should not totally rely on the system because it has some demerits. The self-reconstruction way is natural for the local victims to follow. The support system should be strengthened so that it takes assumes a larger part of housing reconstruction. In the Tohoku area, housing reconstruction is linked to reconstruction machidukuri project, which involves a very complicated process and takes very much time. Japan is now facing not only reconstruction from the GEJE but also preparation for the next huge disaster in the near future, therefore it is crucial to make every kind of preparation by learning from past experiences. One of the important points to be considered is to set up a permanent special organization to learn the entire lesson and to improve the system for the reduction of disaster damage overall.