While the U.S. is going through housing supply shortages, another developed nation across the Pacific is trying to deal with its many vacant, abandoned homes.
According to The New York Times, Japanese municipality governments and planners are trying to find solutions to the empty homes that are starting to creep into the suburbs and major urban areas. The vacancies are caused by Japan’s continued population decline which started in the 1970s.
“Tokyo could end up being surrounded by Detroits,” Tomohiko Makino, a real estate expert who has studied the vacant-house phenomenon, told The New York Times.