Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) recently announced his public housing policy aimed at trying to lower real-estate prices in Taipei and New Taipei City, causing protests and panic among owners of luxury apartments, showing that Ko’s policy might just be on the right tracks.
The protesters are not victims of urban renewal or development projects. Far from it, they are the owners of luxury housing units, which are rented out or sold when the price is right.
Owners of luxury housing units in MeHAS City (美河市), in New Taipei City’s Xindian District (新店) — but administered by the Taipei City Government since it is attached to an MRT station — are especially enraged because Ko has proposed renting out vacant apartments in the complex as public housing units. This suggestion has caused private home owners to worry that both rent and property prices might collapse, saying that their “life savings,” which have been invested in such property, might evaporate.
This is rather ironic, since the protesters are mostly wealthy real-estate owners, many of whom own more than one property, and make capital gains from renting out or selling the properties.
Across the Xindian River (新店溪), merely a couple of hundred meters from MeHAS City, is a village called Sijhou Township (溪洲部落), where most of the residents are Amis Aborigines from Hualien and Taitung.
Although the existence of the village is illegal, it has been home to the scores of people who came to Taipei decades ago to work in the construction industry and other low-paying jobs.
As these people could not afford housing in the city, they built their own homes with whatever materials they could find on the plot of land beside the river, and despite often coming under threat of flooding and government demolition, the villagers have survived.
Most Sijhou residents — many of whom worked on the construction of MeHAS City and other luxury apartment complexes — would be unable to even afford a toilet in MeHAS City. If real-estate investors did not make investments that led to the inflation in property prices, perhaps Sijhou residents would be able to finance safer shelters from the fruits of their labor.
What happened to Sijhou is not an isolated case; similar circumstances can be seen across the whole nation, where hardworking people remain unable to afford to buy modest homes, while the wealthy own multiple properties and rent them out at high prices.
In addition, thousands of families and farmers are forced to leave their homes and farms as the government forcibly seizes their land for constructing industrial estates and luxury housing complexes.
What Ko has announced is only a small step toward improving social justice in housing and bringing down over-inflated property prices. What he has in mind might not be perfect, as the proposed rental prices for public housing units are still too high, and the effectiveness of the policies in the long run still remains questionable.
However, at least the first step has been taken and, judging from the reaction of luxury home owners, it might actually be the right move.
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