The Cabinet yesterday approved a draft housing act aimed at regulating the social housing industry and ensuring affordable and non-discriminatory housing.
To ensure minimum standards for housing, the act calls on authorities at the central and local government levels to adopt necessary measures to draw residential policies and to ensure their implementation.
The draft act says governments can either build or encourage the private sector to build rent-only social housing, with a certain percentage of capacity set aside for specific individuals from low-income households, families in hardship, Aboriginal communities, the elderly, the mentally or physically challenged, people with HIV, disaster victims and the homeless among others.
To avoid cases of people being forced to move out of their apartments or communities for a variety of reasons, the act states that everyone is entitled to fair treatment in housing irrespective of gender, age, religion, race, sexual orientation, illness, appearance, criminal history or economic status.
Under the act, individuals will be barred from obstructing anyone from improving facilities in public space for people with disabilities or disallow anyone from raising guide dogs. Violators may be fined between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000.
The act also proposes to boost the childbirth rate, with people who have three underaged children or more receiving preferential treatment when applying for a rental subsidy or social housing.
At a press conference following the meeting, Construction and Planning Agency director Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) said that the government had decided to build affordable housing near A7 station of the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT development project in Linkou District (林口) and Fujhou, Banqiao District (板橋) — both in New Taipei City (新北市).
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS