Representatives of disadvantaged members of society yesterday condemned the government for allowing the complete commercialization of the housing market and urged the government — as well as the mayoral candidates in next month’s election — to create more rental social housing units.
“I need a stable and suitable place to live,” partially paralyzed Chuang Fu-hua (莊馥華) said with great difficulty via her mother’s “translation” at a press conference held by the Alliance for Social Housing, which is composed of a dozen civic and welfare groups.
Now in her 20s, Chuang was paralyzed when she was trapped in fire in 1994. As she is unable to talk, she could only express herself by spelling out what she would like to say via a specially designed electronic board using the Zhuyin transcribing system.
PHOTO: CNA
Lacking financial support — like many other mentally, physically, socially or economically challenged individuals or families — Chuang and her mother have been living in a rented house and are constantly under the fear that the landlord may ask them to leave at anytime.
“Housing is a basic right and those who cannot afford it should not have to pay a huge amount for it,” a member of the alliance and executive director of the Garden of Hope Foundation, Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) told the press conference. “It’s shocking to learn that rented social housing is only 0.08 percent of this country’s entire housing stock, especially when we compare the figure with other countries.”
In Singapore, 8.7 percent of the country’s housing is social housing, and the figure is 29 percent in Hong Kong, 14 percent in the EU, 20 percent in UK and 34 percent in the Netherlands, Chi said.
Another member of the alliance, Chen Mei-ling (陳美鈴), agreed that Taiwan has a lot to do to catch up with some other countries on this issue.
“Many countries adopted housing laws a long time ago — the UK did so in 1890, the Netherlands in 1901, the US in 1949 and Japan in 1951,” Chen said. “So they’ve had a 100 year head start, but regardless of that, our draft housing bill is still pending Cabinet review and it’s been there for more than 10 years.”
Chen said that social housing is needed because much of the housing market is in the hands of developers and capitalists, while many people do not have a place to stay.
The rental property market is chaotic too, with landlords able to deny lease renewals at anytime, she added.
“Since people are worried that they may get kicked out anytime, they feel safer buying their own houses, and this also contributes to high housing prices,” Chen said. “Government-operated social housing that grants permanent rentals to people who fall under certain criteria, not only would help disadvantaged families and individuals to find stable accommodation, but it could also help to bring down housing prices.”
To raise politicians’ awareness of the issue, the alliance has visited Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and his re-election bid challenger, Su Tseng-chan (蘇貞昌) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), as well as KMT Sinbei City mayoral candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) and the DPP Sinbei City candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
“All four of them responded positively to our demands, however, only Hau and Su proposed concrete plans and integrated them into their campaign agenda,” alliance spokesman Lu Ping-yi (呂秉怡) said. “We’re especially happy to know that Tsai, in her capacity as DPP chairperson, listed social housing as part of her party’s 10-year policy agenda and raised the objective of increasing the percentage of social housing to 10 percent [of the country’s housing capacity] in 10 years.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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