Enhancing housing affordability and social care in Japan and UK - comparative evaluation of policy and practice

The rapid increase in house prices and resultant worsening affordability in urban areas have become common challenges in many advanced economies, including Japan and the UK. Accordingly, an extensive body of academic literature and policy reports has explored the factors contributing to these challenges and the impacts on society and national economy. Affordability is particularly problematic for first time buyers and younger households who want to take a first step on the housing ladder. Nevertheless, both countries are facing a volatile housing market. In UK while affordability has been a major concern since the recovery from the 2008 crash, there is a risk that post Brexit event will now lead to more instability and possibly decline of house price. In Japan on the other hand while Tokyo housing market is characterised by rapid housing price increases the situation in other cities remains more stagnant.

This instability can potentially have a major negative impact on social care provision for the aging population in both countries. The integrative role of housing in social care and welfare policy has become an increasingly prevalent issue in academia and practice emphasising asset-based welfare in both countries. In Japan the country's welfare system is based on an implicit assumption that people acquire their own homes at some stage in their life. It is assumed that people live in their own homes, on their pensions, are supported by their own family members, and use public health care services as required. Similarly in the UK an integrative approach between housing and health and social care has received urgent attention in recent years since the launch of the NHS five-year Forward View and the Care Act 2014. These have promoted closer integration between housing and services that support health and wellbeing.

Nevertheless, as noted earlier, market downturn and /or stagnation in both countries can potentially undermine the asset based welfare model. We are therefore faced with a contradictory situation and policy demands in terms of enhanced affordability relying to some level on reduced house prices and asset based welfare requiring rising markets. As a result we are proposing to establish a network between Brookes and Japanese researchers in the field to enable knowledge exchange and co-learning within the team and the wide stakeholders from the public, private and community domains in the two countries.

The network will facilitate one week workshops in each country that will comprise field visits to housing organisations, affordable housing projects, care service providers, new built care homes and retirement villages. It will also facilitate detailed brainstorming discussion sessions between the team members and also discussion forums with a wide range of stakeholders invited: such as key academics, local and central government policy makers, housing associations, housing and care professionals, housing developers, etc.

In addition the network will enable a 2 week staff exchanges for each country. A UK staff member will spend one week each in Tokyo and Osaka universities in between the planned two workshops. An early career researcher from the University of Tokyo will visit Oxford Brookes University for 2 weeks.

Finally, we will develop a dual language 'UK-Japan Sustainable Housing Network' website for this network project and a linked web-based discussion forum. These facilities will enable further dissemination of ideas and outputs and facilitate continued discussion, communication and networking for at least three years.

The network activities will be of benefit to non-academic beneficiaries in a variety of ways and at different levels. To achieve this we are proposing an impact strategy that will exploit opportunities at different stages during the network design, implementation and dissemination phases of the work to enable us to reach key target groups.

At the public policy level the network has been designed in collaboration with the Public Corporation for Housing Improvement and Development in Japan. They are a direct partner of the project and will be organising part of the activities including a major stakeholder discussion forum in Tokyo. . It should be noted that the stakeholder discussion forums in all cities will be aimed at engaging a broad range of public policy decision makers from both local and central government and health organisations in both UK and Japan. Our discussions and outputs will provide the space for detailed brain storming and examination of current policy initiatives and co-learning within and between UK and Japan. Hence it will facilitate more informed public policy development, implementation and service delivery.

At the professional level we will be engaging with housing and elderly care providers including housing associations, care home investors/managers, developers and housing, care and planning consultants through our discussion forums. We envisage that our deliberations and outputs will be of benefit to these communities both in terms of identifying how public policies impact on practice and introducing the participants to different practices from the different professional communities in the two countries.

At the community level we will be engaging with NGOs and community interest/advocacy groups for affordable housing and elderly care such as Shelter and Age UK and their equivalents in Japan. These organisations will be part of our stakeholder discussion forums and we envisage that our discussions and outputs will be of benefit to them for enabling more informed advocacy and related activities.

In addition to the above in order to enhance the impact even further we are proposing Initial scoping interviews with a wider range of key local stakeholders in each country and at local and national levels (public officials and representatives of housing and elderly professionals and NGOs). These interviews will enable us to further refine the objectives and detailed design and implementation of network. The scoping interviews will also be used to establish a representative stakeholder advisory board.

The impact plan is also firmly rooted within our dissemination and media strategy. These include a bilingual professionally designed website that will be fully accessible to the local residents and stakeholders. This will be regularly updated as the network activities unfold and will host a variety of project outputs including workshop reports and policy and practice briefings (in Japanese and English). In addition we will be establishing an on-line discussion forum that is linked to the website and will enable active engagement of project members with non-academic participants in both countries.We will also make best use of social media (Twitter, Facebook) to provide regular updates and encourage our advisory group members, research participants and other organisations and individuals to 'follow' our progress and to provide their own comments and contributions. We will make special effort to engage proactively with the national and local media.

End of project dissemination activities will include presentation of papers in local, national and international professional seminars, conferences and webinars focused on affordable housing and social care for the elderly.