The Taipei City Government will rent 181 public housing units in June next year in a bid to increase affordable rental housing units for young people and low-income families to 5 percent of all apartment complexes.
The units will be located near new MRT stations, including Xingtian Temple Station, Xianse Temple Station and Xindian Temple Station, and rent will be about 80 percent of the average rent in the area.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Lin Chien-yuan (林建元) said that while the city government was still discussing the details of the program, the initial plan called for units to only be available for low-income families and people under the age of 40 without a property.
The program is part of the city government’s efforts to tackle skyrocketing housing prices.
The city’s Department of Urban Development has selected six plots of municipal land for the construction of public housing units, located mainly in Wenshan (文山) and Neihu (內湖) districts. The project is scheduled for completion in 2014, said Liang I-chu (梁一柱), a division chief at the department.
By 2013, more than 1,000 affordable housing units will be available for rent, he said.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said the city government would cooperate with Taipei County in offering affordable housing.
“A growing number of people are asking us to offer public housing units and we want to answer that public request and make housing more affordable to the general public,” he said.
The average price of a new home in Zhongshan District (中山) has reached NT$1 million (US$31,800) per ping (3.3m²), while only 59 empty public rental housing units are available in the city.
In Taipei, the city government stopped building public housing in 2006 and there is a 10-year waiting list for such units. The monthly rent for a 19-ping public housing unit is about NT$5,600.
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