Japan seems to be in a transitional period concerning its housing market. The increasing number of vacant homes and the need for a "safety net" for vulnerable citizens are posing demanding challenges to the authorities. A delegation from the Housing Bureau at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) visited Brussels last week to draw some inspiration from the way public, cooperative and social housing providers operate in Europe. As a follow up to a very interesting meeting between the delegation and Housing Europe Secretary General and Research Coordinator, Sorcha Edwards and Alice Pittini, we interviewed Mr. Kenji Hamamoto, Deputy Director at the Housing Bureau of the Ministry to know more about the housing reality in Japan.

Benefit to Society is a campaign to tackle negative stereotypes of people living in social housing. It unites 30 housing organisations across England.

Collecting, processing and using data will help housing associations to become more effective and provide in the end better housing for more people. Developing a sector-wide data standard is important in this process, as it will allow associations to share and compare their figures and for their IT-based systems to be able to ‘talk’ to each other.