The government is wholeheartedly committed to solving housing problems, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said at an awards ceremony held yesterday by the Taipei Architects’ Association.
The government has received more than 100 applications to renovate older residential complexes and is implementing a public housing program nationwide, Tsai said.
Tsai presided over the 47th annual ceremony at Taipei’s Nangang Exhibition Center, presenting the winning architects their awards.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Tsai thanked the architects for their contributions, saying that architecture is important because people interact with it every day and are directly affected by it, while it also represents the nation.
Tsai said her administration has been working to resolve housing problems since she took office two years ago, adding that high-quality projects nationwide have been completed or are in the preparatory phases.
The scale of the government’s efforts to deal with housing issues is unprecedented, and her administration has established the first office tasked with urban renewal and social housing, she added.
Amendments to the Housing Act (住宅法) were passed on Dec. 23 last year, she said, adding that one change offers landlords a tax break if they lease to vulnerable groups and those granted housing subsidies, with income to be tax exempt if they charge less than NT$10,000 in rent per month.
The amendment opened up more land for social housing and the central government has been cooperating with local governments to enact new social housing policy, she said.
The passage of the Statute for Expediting Reconstruction of Urban Unsafe and Old Buildings (都市危險及老舊建築物加速重建條例) was accompanied by a revision of the Banking Act (銀行法), freeing up more resources to facilitate urban renewal and improve the quality of urban housing, she said.
Housing projects provide an opportunity for the government and industry to cooperate and together build a fundamental component of society — the buildings that people use every day, she said.
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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