Falling down houses

One of the things I was surprised about when I first started living in the Japanese countryside were the number of houses that were literally falling down like the one in these pictures. After some "research" I was told that it is so costly to dispose of the building materials of the houses and the land is so cheap and plentiful around here that most people just leave houses to rot back into nature and build a brand new one next door rather than going to the trouble of pulling it down. There are also many houses around our area that are no longer lived in, but that will never be sold - mainly because it is the "family house" and therefore contains the Buddhist altar etc. (which can actually be moved, but is not often done). There is also little demand for the houses and there is always the vague hope that someone from the family will return from the big city and choose to live in the countryside.
Back to the house in the picture... every day I drive past this house when I go to get the children from school. If you look carefully you will see that it was once a 2-storied house, but the top story has basically fallen through the first floor. If you look even more closely (you really need to be there in person to do this) you will see that there are many things still inside the house. If you look even more closely at night time you will see that the lights are on and that there are actually people living in there. My husband is currently working in the "welfare" department so I often ask him about it and he says that they have tried to find alternative accommodation for the occupants, but they refuse to shift. It turns out that they have lots of gambling debts... from pachinko! Yet another reason to stay away from the big, noisy, smokey, bright pachinko parlours!