Many cities and towns hit hard by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami are scaling back plans to relocate homes to higher ground, mainly due to soaring construction costs.
Many cities and towns hit hard by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami are scaling back plans to relocate homes to higher ground, mainly due to soaring construction costs.
A survey by The Asahi Shimbun revealed that over the past three years, there has been a 30-percent reduction in the planned number of homes to be built on higher ground or other areas in the three prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, which were devastated by the massive tsunami five years ago.
Some residents in those areas have abandoned plans to rebuild their homes due to the high costs, while others have constructed new homes on their own because local governments are taking too long to prepare plots on the planned new sites.
Local municipalities had compiled plans to move entire neighborhoods as part of an overall strategy to return their communities to their former state. But with many residents of those communities being elderly and concerned about whether they can pay for the construction of new homes, those local governments have had to scale back their home construction plans.
According to statistics compiled by the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, about 125,000 homes were completely destroyed by the 2011 disaster in the three prefectures.
To prevent a recurrence in the event of a future disaster, the central and local governments have placed as a main pillar of their reconstruction plans the moving of residential neighborhoods to higher ground or further inland.
Some local governments have raised the foundations of plots to allow homeowners to rebuild on their former sites.
The Asahi study compared the latest plans announced by local governments with those the Reconstruction Agency compiled as of the end of December 2012 regarding plans to rebuild housing. The study covered 31 municipalities in the three prefectures.
The number of planned homes to be constructed in those municipalities had decreased to 19,707 from the 28,060 planned in 2012.
Eleven municipalities in Iwate Prefecture reduced the number of planned homes by 2,056, while 14 municipalities in Miyagi Prefecture slashed 5,610 homes from their plans, and six municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture cut their plans by 687 homes.
Land plots for home construction has been completed for 1,787 homes in Iwate, 3,461 in Miyagi and 634 in Fukushima. However, that total of 5,882 is only about 30 percent of the planned number according to the most recent plans.
According to Reconstruction Agency officials and local governments, many disaster victims have given up on plans to rebuild their own homes because of the higher construction costs. Factors behind the cost increases include a shortage in building materials and increased expenses for construction workers because of the huge demand to rebuild in the three prefectures.
The long time it has taken to prepare new land inland or on higher ground has also caused some disaster victims to rebuild their homes on their own rather than wait for the local government to provide the new land.
Local governments have also constructed rental units for disaster victims with assistance from the central government. Many senior citizens who have abandoned plans to rebuild their homes have moved into such units.