Book Description
For more than a decade, policymakers and planners around the United States have increasingly been making a concerted effort to address the needs of the retiring baby boomers, particularly in funding for health care, long-term social services, elder justice, and retirement security. The 2015 Japanese Special Measures Law to Further a Response to Vacant Housing provides local governments and municipalities in Japan with expansive powers to identify vacant homes and compel owners to repair or remediate them. The Japanese Vacant Housing Law asks us to consider more carefully (1) what will happen to housing when the baby boomers die, and (2) what measures can be taken to prevent an abandoned housing crisis of equal scale in the United States. This article reviews general demographic trends in the United States and Japan, provides a summary of the 2015 Japanese Vacant Housing Law, and recommends development of data to assist with policies in the United States that can better address, and possibly prevent, a potential exacerbation of vacant and abandoned housing related blight over the course of the next 45 years.