Financial Deregulation and the Privatization of Housing Finance Policy in Japan : An Argument against abolishing the Government Housing Loan Corporation

In postwar Japan, the public policy to promote housing provision was served mainly by the three institutions established in the 1950s: the Government Housing Loan Corporation (GHLC), the municipality-managed Public Housing System and the Japan Housing Corporation. However, from the mid-1990s onward, remarkable changes in housing policies began to appear. The changes include a drastic restructuring of the existing system and institutions. This paper, focusing on the government' s plan to abolish GHLC, provides a critique of the restructuring in Japan' s housing finance policy. First, we discuss the background against which the changes in housing finance policy are concerned: financial deregulation and bad loan problems. Secondly, we describe the government' s plan to abolish GHLC, and thirdly, examine this plan' s actual implications and possible consequences. Lastly, we raise an alternative perspective for desirable reforms of housing finance policy.