The Taipei City Government will convert an abandoned supermarket in Wenshan District (文山) into a public rental apartment with 90 units in the first step of its plan to increase the number of affordable housing units throughout the city to 50,000 in the next four years.
Each of the planned public housing units will be about 21 ping (69.4m2) and the rent will be about NT$11,000 (US$377) per month, which is about 80 percent of the average rent in the area, according to the city’s Department of Urban Development.
Inspecting the abandoned building yesterday, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said the city chose the site because of its location in Wanfang Community near MRT Wanfang Community Station and because of the environment of the neighborhood.
“We are not building the public housing units for profit, but to ease the burden of Taipei residents by offering affordable housing. We can also increase the usage rate of abandoned city properties,” Hau said.
The abandoned supermarket has been vacant since shortly after it was established in 1989 because of a lack of business and the city had failed in six attempts to find a bidder.
Ting Yu-chun (丁育群), commissioner of the department, said the housing units would cost about NT$200 million to build, adding that construction would be complete by 2015.
Taipei residents under 40 years old and low-income families will be prioritized for the units, but the city government will work out more details before finalizing who will be eligible to rent the units, he said.
The city also plans to rent out 181 public housing units this year that are located near new MRT stations, including Xingtian Temple Station, Xianse (Sianse) Temple Station and Xindian (Sindian) Station. Rents will also be about 80 percent of the average rent in those areas.
Increasing the number of affordable rental housing units was a major policy proposed by Hau last year in an effort to tackle skyrocketing housing prices.
Hau’s plan to build public housing units on a piece of land owned by the air force in downtown Taipei, however, has met with a lukewarm response by the central government.
Hau also reiterated his administration’s determination to promote the plan, saying it would enhance communications with the central government and nearby residents to attract more support for the plan.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater