At a time when inexpensive public apartments are in short supply due to rising demand, the government is weighing measures to promote the use of vacant homes to serve as housing for low-income citizens. Such steps could serve the dual purpose of building a housing safety net for the growing ranks of elderly and young people trying to survive on low incomes, and dealing with an increasing number of vacant houses that potentially pose threats to the public safety and other hazards. Officials need to design the policy in such ways that it effectively boosts the supply of low-cost housing.

The aging of Japan's population and the increase in irregular jobs has led to a rise in the number of low-income households comprising senior citizens or unmarried young people. But the supply of inexpensive public apartments — which number 2.16 million units nationwide — is declining, particularly in areas suffering from depopulation where local governments, under the constraints of tight fiscal coffers, hesitate to build new apartments. Even in urban areas where the supply shortage is more acute, local authorities are under pressure to build more nursing care facilities for the elderly and day care centers for small children, making it difficult for them to come up with funding for the construction of public housing.

As of fiscal 2014, there was an average of 5.8 times more applicants for public housing units than supply across the country. In Tokyo, applicants outnumbered supply by 22.8 to 1. Building more public apartments to meet all of such demand will not be feasible from a fiscal standpoint.