Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opposition to some proposals for Housing Act (住宅法) revisions risks sacrificing the interests of disadvantaged households for the sake of construction firms, members of housing rights groups said yesterday, calling on Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers to delay passage of proposed amendments until reviews are completed.
“We feel that that there has to be a joint review of the Executive Yuan’s draft bill,” Housing Movement spokesman Peng Yang-kai (彭揚凱) said, adding that KMT legislators were remiss in demanding that priority be given to the passage of amendment provisions agreed to by consensus.
Several amendments passed out of committee during the previous legislative session, with the legislative floor scheduled to conduct a third reading of them today unless the KMT caucus agrees to a delay, Peng said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
The KMT’s stance put DPP legislators in the sticky situation of potentially having to vote against popular provisions — such as a proposal to increase the proportion of social housing allocated to disadvantaged groups — if they want to halt the revisions, Peng said.
“The KMT’s strategy appears to be to pass a set of revisions and then muddy the waters when they are passed to the Executive Yuan,” he said.
Peng accused KMT legislators of seeking to lay the groundwork for a legislative boycott aimed at removing amendment provisions that would require construction firms to publish ongoing sales figures for housing units they are working on.
“It is fine if KMT legislators have issues with some provisions, but they should not use benefiting disadvantaged groups as an excuse to boycott a full set of revisions,” he said.
“The current version of the amendments that have passed out of committee is an empty shell because there is no real way to implement it due to a lack of complementary measures,” Homeless Taiwan secretary-general Lee Ying-tzi (李盈姿) said, citing Executive Yuan versions that would enable differential rates and subsidies for social housing.
“Homeless people are even less able to pay rent than low-income households, so the current single rent rate creates a lot of difficulties for us,” she said.
“Social housing is not just about the proportion allocated to people from disadvantaged groups, a huge problem is that there is not enough supply at this point,” Federation for the Welfare of the Elderly secretary-general Wu Shu-hui (吳淑惠) said.
The Executive Yuan’s bill also contained important provisions to enable the construction or rent of 200,000 promised new units.
KMT Legislator Lee Yan-hsiu (李彥秀) denied that her party was opposed to publishing ongoing sales figures for housing units under construction,
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