A preliminary survey showed that public and private university dormitories in Taipei are short 14,772 beds, the Taipei City Government said yesterday, adding that it plans to use government-owned buildings to supply 4,223 beds over the next five years
The announcement was made after the Taipei Department of Urban Development on Tuesday said that the Da Chiun Building (大群館) — which is owned by the family of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) New Taipei City mayoral candidate Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and used by Chinese Culture University as a dorm — does not meet local zoning laws.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Charles Lin (林欽榮) said the shortage of students dorms is not limited to Chinese Culture University, and the Ministry of Education’s preliminary survey showed a shortage of 14,772 beds at the 26 universities in Taipei, and that seven schools have a supply-demand ratio of below 70 percent.
The schools with the greatest shortage of dorms are mostly in the city’s Daan (大安), Shilin (士林) and Wenshan (文山) districts, he said.
The city government has come up with short-term, intermediate and long-term plans to solve the problem, including a short-term plan of renting 5 percent of the city’s public housing units that have been reserved for “people who study or work in Taipei” to students, Lin said.
The intermediate plan is to collaborate with the central government to make use of unused government-owned land to construct student dorms, while the long-term plan is to re-evaluate urban plans and acquire suitable land for the construction of dormitories.
So far, a proportion of housing units at Shilin-Beitou Technology Park and Xinglong Public Housing in Wenshan District are earmarked for student dorms, in addition to units in other government-owned buildings, bringing the total number of beds that the city government could supply over the next five years to 4,223, Lin said.
The city government would discuss its plans with the Ministry of Education and the universities next week, he said.
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