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2015 January 14 - 20 TOP3 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

1995 Hanshin-Awaji quake victims still struggling to find place to get settled

It has been 20 years since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake claimed 6,434 lives and damaged about 470,000 houses on January 17, 1995. Survivors are still experiencing various difficulties in resuming their livelihoods.

One of the difficulties is about their accommodations. Many disaster victims living in publicly-rented housing units have now been required to move to other places.

After the 1995 earthquake, Hyogo Prefecture as well as Kobe and Nishinomiya cities rented 7,700 private housing units on a 20-year lease to disaster victims. Since 2010, these local governments have urged the victims to find other places because of the 20-year lease limit.

A 76-year-old resident of a publicly-rented housing complex in Nishinomiya City, Nakashita Setsuko, angrily said, “Three years ago, the city government suddenly informed me that the limit of my apartment lease is 20 years. It told me nothing about the lease limitation at the time of application 20 years ago. The application form also indicates nothing about it.” She went on to say, “It is hard for elderly people to move to a new place and develop neighbor relations anew. I want to continue to live here.”

Pushed by disaster sufferers’ efforts, Hyogo Prefecture and Kobe City decided to make an exception: residents aged 85 and over living in city-rented housing units and residents aged 80 and over in prefecture-rented housing units will be allowed to continue to live in their apartments after the deadline. Nishinomiya City, however, refuses to make an exception.

Under this circumstance, on January 15, Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Representatives Horiuchi Terufumi, who won a seat in the general election at the end of 2014, together with JCP members of the prefectural and Kobe and Nishinomiya city assemblies made a representation to the central government, demanding government measures enabling all disaster victims to continue to live in a municipal-rented public housing complex.


Past related articles:
> 1995 quake victims in Itami can continue living in public housing [January 26, 2013]
> Kobe Earthquake victims fight against local governments’ relocation order [January 17, 2013]
> Survivors of Kobe Earthquake fear losing houses [January 17, 2011]