Just 1 house for every 50 applicants: Japanese move into temporary housing 1 month after quake

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Evacuees walk in front of their temporary housing in Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture on April 9. Survivors of March 11's massive tsunami began moving into temporary housing.

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan — One month after a devastating tsunami flattened their homes, some families took a step toward normalcy and moved into temporary housing, while Japan's prime minister promised Sunday to help fishermen along the devastated coast get back to their boats.

Rows of 36 boxy, gray houses line a junior high school parking lot in this port city pulverized by the March 11 wave, and, after a lottery, the first lucky few families moved in this weekend. Each unit is just 320 square feet (30 square meters), but replete with modern comforts like a television, refrigerator, microwave and washing machine — a welcome upgrade for the homeless, many of whom have slept on the floors of school gyms for a month.

That's just one house for every 50 applicants.

The city hopes to complete 400 units in eight different locations by mid May, although that will still only cover about one-quarter of the families in need. Other areas have similar plans, but Rikuzentakata's units are the first to be completed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42521128/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

[jody]

1. Japan can use it's loans to US to rebuild. To whom can the US, a $13 trillion debtor nation, turn

when we have a catastrophe?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. The poor have a little more to give.

Slackers.

[girl gone mad]

3. We don't need to turn to anyone.

Neither does Japan.

Sovereign fiat currency.

[FLPanhandle]

4. The good news is so many survived.

It would be worse if they had more houses than survivors.