The most tangible issue for Taiwanese this year is probably the rising prices of consumer goods and housing. The costs of these essentials are galloping ahead like a horse that has slipped its tether, never to return.
Out of concern for the public’s most immediate concern — the housing question — and to curb its negative effects, the government expanded the rental subsidy program with an annual budget of NT$30 billion (US$1.03 billion) to reduce the rental burden on 500,000 households.
Renters, who generally earn low salaries and cannot afford to buy a home, might be able to breathe a sigh of relief for a little while, but this policy of splurging on subsidies is only a short-term treatment of the symptoms of the problem, which avoids social housing policies, which would be part of a long-term solution.
In 1989, Taiwan saw the birth of the Snails Without Shells Alliance, which later spawned the Housing Movement and the Social Housing Promotion Alliance. Over the years, these movements have resulted in numerous protests, as an increasing number of people started taking housing justice seriously.
Housing prices are still soaring. Over the years, successive governments have announced plans to halt speculation in the housing market, while pledging to uphold housing justice, but they have failed to resolve the problem of high prices.
When Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was running for president in 2015, her campaign team drew up a wonderful blueprint for social housing policy, which included building 200,000 social housing units in eight years. In 2018, Tsai’s government established the National Housing and Urban Regeneration Center.
It feels like only yesterday that these grand schemes were proposed, but Tsai has been in office for six years and only about 19,000 social housing units have been completed — less than 10 percent of the promised total.
Even if the 24,000 units currently under construction are included in the total, the administration has only met 20 percent of its target. The government’s lackluster implementation of its policies is putting people’s dream of owning a home beyond their reach.
Although the rent subsidy policy was launched as a “win-win” proposal, it cannot conceal the lack of progress in building social housing and soaring housing prices.
The price of a home is often in the tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars, and newly built homes in metropolitan areas can cost more than NT$1 million per ping (3.3m2). Having risen to such a dizzying height over the years, housing prices are unlikely to ever return to their former levels. No wonder that when Vice President William Lai (賴清德) gave a speech at National Cheng Kung University on March 21, nearly half of the students said they wanted to take things easy and not strive to attain the unattainable.
If the promise of housing justice remains unfulfilled over such a long time, it could lead to social instability and a public backlash. Those in government should pay serious attention to the problem.
Yu Mao is a writer.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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