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Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

theguardian.com

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Re: Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

#31

Post by gyc »

ilamont wrote: post #9

Several of the examples in the article hinted at familial estrangement, which makes things much worse. I lived in Taiwan, which also has a stagnant birth rate (only 181,606 births last year, https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3611847 ) and a decades-long trend for young people to migrate to the large cities, or go to China to try their fortunes there. But there is also a strong tradition of multi-generational hous…

> Several of the examples in the article hinted at familial estrangement, which makes things much worse.

Yes as somebody from a Taiwanese family that also really stuck out from the article. The daughter in Tokyo only seeing the father once a year? Seems like there are deeper problems there.

Re: Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

#32

Post by gopi »

npunt wrote: post #13

In everything from technology to culture to aging, Japan seems to be a portent for things yet to happen in the west. We tend to view suburbs as these static places that serve a particular purpose for primarily families and where nothing changes. But in fact suburbs are starting to transform into de facto retirement communities as boomers exit the workforce, due in large part to incentives from certain laws that keep…

This is a issue particular to California because of Prop 13. In many other places in US, the housing stock circulate as people go thro life changes. Not so much in California

Re: Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

#33

Post by fooblitzky »

ghaff wrote: post #12
Tiktaalik wrote: post #3

The future of NA suburbs as well. Have fun living in the car dependent sprawling suburbs when you're 80 and not legally allowed to drive anymore. I guess one can hope that autonomous cars will finally appear to bail one out of this predicament, but I'll personally be setting myself up to retire in a place where everything I need is a short walk or wheelchair roll away.

Cities are no panacea. Just a couple of months ago I was in Manhattan after a bad muscle sprain. I could walk a few blocks but it was hard. I guess in a dense city it’s easier to just take an Uber everywhere but for some types of restricted mobility it’s actually much easier to be able to drive a car more or less door to door.

Until you legally can't, as the parent comment mentioned.

Re: Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

#34

Post by jseliger »

ilamont wrote: post #9

Several of the examples in the article hinted at familial estrangement, which makes things much worse. I lived in Taiwan, which also has a stagnant birth rate (only 181,606 births last year, https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3611847 ) and a decades-long trend for young people to migrate to the large cities, or go to China to try their fortunes there. But there is also a strong tradition of multi-generational hous…

hinted at familial estrangement, which makes things much worse

This article appeared on HN a few weeks ago: https://www.city-journal.org/decline-of-family-loneliness-ep... and has stayed with me. Perhaps it'll stay with me forever.

Re: Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

#35

Post by fooblitzky »

gyc wrote: post #31
ilamont wrote: post #9

Several of the examples in the article hinted at familial estrangement, which makes things much worse. I lived in Taiwan, which also has a stagnant birth rate (only 181,606 births last year, https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3611847 ) and a decades-long trend for young people to migrate to the large cities, or go to China to try their fortunes there. But there is also a strong tradition of multi-generational hous…

> Several of the examples in the article hinted at familial estrangement, which makes things much worse. Yes as somebody from a Taiwanese family that also really stuck out from the article. The daughter in Tokyo only seeing the father once a year? Seems like there are deeper problems there.

Maybe the culture of extremely long work hours alienated the father from his family?

Re: Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

#36

Post by bilbo0s »

astrange wrote: post #20
crimsonalucard wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What??? I'm from Cupertino. Haven't been back in ages but I had no idea this was going on. Do you have a source? not that I don't believe you, but I would be interested in learning more.

Cupertino residents are incredibly NIMBY and incredibly dedicated to not letting anyone new move in - traffic, you know. The city council they just elected has many great opinions like "Apple employees are too poor to live in Cupertino" and "Men who work at Apple will molest our daughters and hire prostitutes". Right now Vallco mall has been torn down and the city is trying its best to stop an affordable housing deve…

Part of problem in Japan:

>also set strict requirements for younger people who lived there: if your income exceeded a certain threshold, you would be evicted. If you refused, you were charged rent – at potentially up to twice the market rate, depending on your income...

Part of problem in US:

>Cupertino residents are ... incredibly dedicated to not letting anyone new move in...

Sounds like HNUser "npunt" was correct in the assertion that the same thing seems to be going down in both places, and for similar reasons. Difference being that the Japanese are open to using the law in a more stringent manner to keep younger people out.

Re: Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

#37

Post by zem »

pas wrote: post #16
gwbas1c wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the US, a lot of upper-middle-class HATE mixed income dwellings. At least in dense cities, public housing can be mixed into free market housing.

They hate it because it became a one stop shop solution for everything. (Especially the mental illness problems are troubling without any of the very much needed therapy, continuous follow ups, visits from a social worker, etc.)

that would be a bit more believable were it not for the people who make sure that the "poor apartments" in a building have a separate entrance.

Re: Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

#38

Post by smallnamespace »

dalbasal wrote: post #10
Tiktaalik wrote: post #6

Really interesting article. > ... it also set strict requirements for younger people who lived there: if your income exceeded a certain threshold, you would be evicted. If you refused, you were charged rent – at potentially up to twice the market rate, depending on your income. The goal was to make public housing a safety net for elderly, low-income and socially vulnerable people. The effect, however, has been to mak…

I increasingly think that for social safety nets to work well, they need to be universalized, if possible. Otherwise we get welfare traps, ghettoisation or just poor quality (like buses in places where only the poor use em). It doesn't mean everyone has to use it, just that they can. This is common sense in services like health or education, where we're used to it.

We already have a good solution to avoid ghettoisation or traps called progressive taxation.

However, it doesn't go far enough because the tax rate doesn't take benefits into account, so even though you're getting >$0.80 of every dollar earned, after adjusting for benefits it may instead be $0.20 or even negative. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is an especially large contributor to this situation [1].

To avoid a trap, marginal income after taxes and benefits should start high and fall monotonically. It should probably also be concave up (the amount of income to bump you into the next 'adjusted tax' bracket gets bigger and bigger).

[1] https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publicati... (page 767, Figure 2)

Re: Tokyo's suburban housing became vast ghettoes for the old

#40

Post by codedokode »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #3

The future of NA suburbs as well. Have fun living in the car dependent sprawling suburbs when you're 80 and not legally allowed to drive anymore. I guess one can hope that autonomous cars will finally appear to bail one out of this predicament, but I'll personally be setting myself up to retire in a place where everything I need is a short walk or wheelchair roll away.

By the way, today I saw old man and woman riding electric scooters with seats (they look like this [1]). I thought that it could be useful for senior people in the city. But our city is mostly flat, of course they won't help to climb those endless stairways in Japan.

[1] https://www.dhresource.com/0x0s/f2-albu-g6-M01-8B-09-rBVaSFt...

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