December 21, 2010
An article entitled “Interest rates on housing loans can be reduced” (Akahata Sunday Edition, December 12) has attracted public attention. The writers of the article said that they have already received hundreds of responses via telephone, fax, and e-mail.
Because of the recession, the number of people unable to keep up on mortgage payments and forced to sell off their houses is sharply rising. Useful tips to reduce the amount of payments by several million yen, reported in the article, provided welcome news for them at the end of the year. The Akahata Sunday Edition is now preparing to publish a sequel to the article in its New Year issue.
What concerns us most is the plight of those who cannot afford to have their homes. In the United States, more and more young adults are living with their parents and are fully dependent on them, according to the Akahata foreign news page published on December 20. In Japan, a survey has recently found that half of men in their early thirties are living with their parents. This is unarguably caused by the deteriorating employment condition.
Things could be worse if you do not have families capable of supporting you. A TV director who has sounded the alarm to the general public through NHK programs entitled, “Working poor” and “Muen shakai (Alienated society),” said: “What we are experiencing currently is a society where people cannot afford to care for others and the weak in isolation are abandoned without support.”
The growing number of “working poor” has led to a rise in the “housing poor (people without houses).” Once temporary workers lose their jobs, they can easily fall into arrears on rent payments, which will likely lead them to lose their apartments.
As a form of penalty, the Kan Cabinet decided to deduct unpaid fees for childcare center and school lunches from child allowance benefits, while it cuts the corporate tax rate. When Prime Minister Kan Naoto took office, the media praised him as an advocate of citizens’ rights. What do they have to say about that today?
-Akahata, December 21, 2010
Because of the recession, the number of people unable to keep up on mortgage payments and forced to sell off their houses is sharply rising. Useful tips to reduce the amount of payments by several million yen, reported in the article, provided welcome news for them at the end of the year. The Akahata Sunday Edition is now preparing to publish a sequel to the article in its New Year issue.
What concerns us most is the plight of those who cannot afford to have their homes. In the United States, more and more young adults are living with their parents and are fully dependent on them, according to the Akahata foreign news page published on December 20. In Japan, a survey has recently found that half of men in their early thirties are living with their parents. This is unarguably caused by the deteriorating employment condition.
Things could be worse if you do not have families capable of supporting you. A TV director who has sounded the alarm to the general public through NHK programs entitled, “Working poor” and “Muen shakai (Alienated society),” said: “What we are experiencing currently is a society where people cannot afford to care for others and the weak in isolation are abandoned without support.”
The growing number of “working poor” has led to a rise in the “housing poor (people without houses).” Once temporary workers lose their jobs, they can easily fall into arrears on rent payments, which will likely lead them to lose their apartments.
As a form of penalty, the Kan Cabinet decided to deduct unpaid fees for childcare center and school lunches from child allowance benefits, while it cuts the corporate tax rate. When Prime Minister Kan Naoto took office, the media praised him as an advocate of citizens’ rights. What do they have to say about that today?
-Akahata, December 21, 2010
