Cheap Old Houses Instagram becomes too popular, creates home-buying wars

boing
42

This sort of thing–the community, the diversity, the acceptance and co-operation exemplified in the article and your corroboration–gives me hope for the future. Thank you!

Whenever I find a gem of a [true fact-based] story like the one you have confirmed, I try to spread it around not just to friends and family, but in networks like BB, neighborhood association email groups, city administrators, pretty much anyone who will listen. Trying to remove fear from this equation “outsiders who don’t look / worship / think like we do are coming to take our cheap houses / jobs / public safety” is IMO Job One.

I believe people do not think clearly about any aspect of governing, policing, educating, housing, running a business etc. etc. when afraid. No sound decision can emanate from a fear-based scenario.

Japan has a problem for years, and I know I have brought this up in other posts here, re insufficient replacement population and their surging aging population.

So many empty houses in Japan. Shortfalls in labor force for nursing home and hospital staff, some positions now being filled by robots. One day the robots are making your cars, the next thing you know they are taking care of the elderly.

I suppose the term “cheap old houses” can be relative because I don’t know if the strong cultural bias in Japan against outsiders means empty house owners in Japan would freely sell to immigrants or foreigners or if Japanese law would even let foreigners own houses.

Please forgive my ignorance. I am in Austin, Texas, U.S., and not in Japan. Cultural hurdles are hurdles, everywhere. Still, I found this promising:

Yay for GSU! Thanks for the first-hand report.
They are luck to have you @anon61221983, and I hope they know that.

ETA: typos

2 Likes
43

There was one for sale in upstate NY a few years ago, relatively small as far as churches go, but it came with an attached cemetery, so you basically had no back yard.

2 Likes
44

That would be pretty fucking cool.

3 Likes
45

Welcome to my garden…

image
image.jpg1600×1200 711 KB

3 Likes
46

Here 'tis:

I just would hate having to mow the lawn in between gravestones all the time, would be hours walking around with the weed-wacker.

2 Likes
47

Yeah, that’s the thing about Japan - it’s like the massive labor shortage caused someone to sarcastically ask the question: “Are we going to let in more foreigners to do the work, or do we want to use some sort of imaginary sci-fi super-robots to do the work instead?” And the country’s answer was, “Robots it is, then.”
There are guest worker programs, like the ones they have bringing in Chinese agricultural workers, but the workers are kept segregated (they’re threatened with deportation if they even talk to local women, because racism), and they’re very temporary. They’re definitely not buying houses.
So it’s all about luring young people out of urban areas back into rural areas to keep them alive. (Except young people left rural areas for the same reason they’ve done so in the US, so… good luck to them with that.)

3 Likes
48

If wishes were ponies… I’d be going through A LOT of horse feed!

1 Like
49

If you didn’t follow politics, you wouldn’t give it much thought. It’s a big country. There’s a little bit for everyone in America.

50

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.