Housing reform advocates yesterday called for more effective government measures to regulate the rental market to help the public, especially disadvantaged groups, to find safe and affordable housing.
“The real problem has been the government, which has to understand that housing is not just about purchasing a home and that housing policy should not just be about real estate,” Housing Movement spokesman Peng Yang-Kai (彭揚凱) said.
He said that the government had “ignored” housing speculation, while failing to effectively regulate the rental market.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
By making it difficult for people to find “reasonable” and “safeguarded” rental options, current policy pushes consumers into purchasing properties, harming the interests of people from disadvantaged backgrounds, he said.
Garden of Hope Foundation director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said that many of the single mothers her foundation work with have difficulty finding safe and affordable rental properties, adding that property owners’ unwillingness to register with the government often prevents these women from benefitting from the government’s rental subsidy program.
Tsuei Ma Ma Foundation for Housing and Community Service chief executive Lu Ping-yi (呂秉怡) said that most rentals take place on a “black market” because of property owners’ desire to avoid taxes.
Only if the government takes measure to force rental transactions into the open can it use incentives to encourage property owners to rent to people from disadvantaged groups, he said, adding that both owners and renters lack safe ground in the current underground market.
Housing rights advocates called for the construction of sufficient public housing, increased rental subsidies and new regulations and incentives to move rental transactions into the open.
They also called for increases in property taxes to stifle speculation, as well as additional registration requirements on properties’ size and sale value, and the publication of information on properties’ vulnerability to natural disasters.
The administrative level of Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency should also be raised, they said.
While the three main presidential candidates have all presented public housing platforms, their proposals re still “incomplete,” Peng said, adding that the group would seek to hold discussions with each of the candidates.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
INTIMIDATION: In addition to the likely military drills near Taiwan, China has also been waging a disinformation campaign to sow division between Taiwan and the US Beijing is poised to encircle Taiwan proper in military exercise “Joint Sword-2024C,” starting today or tomorrow, as President William Lai (賴清德) returns from his visit to diplomatic allies in the Pacific, a national security official said yesterday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said that multiple intelligence sources showed that China is “highly likely” to launch new drills around Taiwan. Although the drills’ scale is unknown, there is little doubt that they are part of the military activities China initiated before Lai’s departure, they said. Beijing at the same time is conducting information warfare by fanning skepticism of the US and
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan during US president-elect Donald Trump’s time in office, Taiwanese and foreign academics said on Friday. Trump is set to begin his second term early next year. Xi’s ambition to establish China as a “true world power” has intensified over the years, but he would not initiate an invasion of Taiwan “in the near future,” as his top priority is to maintain the regime and his power, not unification, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University distinguished visiting professor and contemporary Chinese politics expert Akio Takahara said. Takahara made the comment at a
DEFENSE: This month’s shipment of 38 modern M1A2T tanks would begin to replace the US-made M60A3 and indigenous CM11 tanks, whose designs date to the 1980s The M1A2T tanks that Taiwan expects to take delivery of later this month are to spark a “qualitative leap” in the operational capabilities of the nation’s armored forces, a retired general told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview published yesterday. On Tuesday, the army in a statement said it anticipates receiving the first batch of 38 M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks from the US, out of 108 tanks ordered, in the coming weeks. The M1 Abrams main battle tank is a generation ahead of the Taiwanese army’s US-made M60A3 and indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have
RSS