Successive governments have attempted to provide public housing for those who need it, while trying to keep prices in check. However, they have failed on both counts. Although public housing prices are relatively low, only middle and high-income earners are able to afford them, while prices within the wider housing market remain stubbornly high.
Because of these issues, people in 1994 started calling on the government to provide social housing, when former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), during his time as Taipei mayor, started pushing for public housing that could only be rented and would not be available for purchase. Social housing was incorporated into the central government’s comprehensive housing policy in 2005 and became a part of social movements through the non-governmental Social Housing Advocacy Consortium in 2010. The Housing Act (住宅法) was finally passed in 2011. Unfortunately, the breadth of social housing was scaled down in the act.
During the 2010 special municipality elections, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) agreed to introduce social housing policies. The Executive Yuan drew up an action plan to improve the living conditions of the general public. As a result, 3,960 apartments were constructed near Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. In addition, a 4,480-apartment “appropriate housing” complex — originally referred to as “affordable housing” — was constructed in Fujhou in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). Of the apartments in the two projects, 5 to 10 percent were set aside as rentals.
In April last year, an investigation was opened over allegations of fraud in connection with an appropriate housing project in what is now Bade District (八德) in Taoyuan. Former Construction and Planning Bureau director Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) was accused of taking bribes from the contractor. The irregularities showed that the appropriate housing developments were simply versions of the already discredited public housing projects.
At about the same time, the Ministry of the Interior announced its social housing plan. The first phase of five planned development sites was forecast to provide 1,661 homes.
However, construction has been continually delayed and the completion date has been postponed indefinitely. Social housing projects in and around Taipei have been an unmitigated failure.
Next year’s presidential and legislative elections are getting closer and Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said that homes that are purchased by first-time buyers should be sold at prices that young people can afford. This suggestion, while barely avoiding selling the nation’s land at below market prices, shows that the housing market is still in the doldrums.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) has called for affordable “citizens’ housing” for workers: This is in accordance with the old mindset that equates land ownership with wealth. Furthermore, Hung’s financing social housing with the public welfare lottery is unreliable and there is no way to guarantee how many homes can be built on land acquired this way.
Housing prices that are at NT$6 million (US$182,648) per ping (3.3m2) are just as unrealistic as the NT$60,000 per ping that were sold under the housing for workers scheme 20 years ago. In the end only a little more than 4,000 homes were built — less than one-10th the planned number.
In the scheme, when a worker bought a home, the government subsidized the interest on the loan, the down payment on the loan could be deducted from the worker’s labor pension.
People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜) has said that the rental scheme for young people would allow tenants to purchase homes after a period of five years. Again, the idea is to make use of the labor pensions of prospective buyers as a secondary source of capital.
In Singapore, public housing projects are financed by the Central Provident Fund — an employment-based savings scheme — which are then rented out to workers. The income generated from rent is used to replenish the fund.
In Taiwan, if people’s pensions are prematurely plundered to purchase apartments, they would own a home, but would have no income when they retire — how would they survive in their old age? This defeats the purpose of social housing being used to support low-income groups, physically and mentally disabled people, single parents, elderly people and other vulnerable members of society.
Lin Wan-i is a professor of social work at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Edward Jones
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