Not for the first time, one has to wonder just what it is that employees of the Taipei Department of Urban Development, the Urban Design Review Committee, the Construction Management Office and the Revenue Office have been doing over the past decade or two, or more.
Whatever it is, it keeps them so busy that they apparently never venture outside their offices to see all the new projects being built. Make that all the illegal projects being built or illegal modifications being made.
It turns out that bureaucrats’ stringent adherence to rules and regulations when it comes to demolishing homes for urban renewal projects or collecting taxes, fees and fines is conspicuously absent when it comes to following the law or city regulations with regard to high-end housing projects and illegal rooftop additions or other building modifications.
The owners of 1,678 residences in Neihu District (內湖) near the Miramar Entertainment Park face losing their homes — and massive fines — because their apartment buildings were constructed in an area zoned more than two decades ago only for commercial and recreational use.
The urban development department in March began sending letters to the owners, warning that they would be fined or their utilities cut off if they did not vacate their homes. Yet all those illegal units had been built and sold — and residential taxes paid — without anyone in the city government or anywhere else, such as bank mortgage departments or law firms — questioning their legality.
The same kind of willfully blind attitude was at work a few years ago when Hsin Han Development Co negotiated a deal with the city to allow tour buses to use the garage at the “office building” complex it was constructing on Chungshan N Road in front of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Shilin Residence (士林官邸) in return for an extra floor space allowance.
Somehow between the time that deal was made in 2011 and 2014, when a sales office opened up on the site, the office complex had become the Hsin Han Shilin Official Residence, with apartments selling for NT$200 million (US$6.67 million) or so, even though the area is zoned solely for commercial use.
It was only last year, when the complex’s management reneged on the garage deal, that the urban development office admitted that the very prominent buildings “contravened the rules on land use” and promised to investigate Hsin Han’s home sales.
Not much has been heard about an investigation since then — or whether the wealthy buyers will have to vacate the premises, as their fellow city residents in Neihu are being told to do.
Last month, while talking about the illegal Neihu residences, illegal rooftop structures and illegal modifications to building interiors, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said the government has a duty to enforce demolition of illegal structures, especially rooftop apartments and others that endanger public safety.
He also made it clear on Nov. 10 just what he thought of the Taipei Construction Management Office, calling it “rotten to the core.”
However, Ko should also remember that the city has a duty to protect city residents from unscrupulous developers and inefficient or craven civil servants: In the Neihu and Shilin cases, like so many others, construction permits were approved, fees and taxes paid, not to mention the construction loans and home mortgages that were approved.
While consumers should exercise due diligence when making such a major investment as buying a home, who could blame the average person for assuming that such a transaction is completely legal, for not recognizing that so much transparently public activity was actually just hiding illegal constructions?
Before people start losing their homes, perhaps some veteran city bureaucrats should lose their jobs.
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