Civic groups last week urged government to help get more homeless people off the streets as the COVID-19 pandemic affected eateries, leading to a 42 percent decrease in the number of homeless hired as part-time workers in the tertiary sector compared with 2019.
There were 13,238 homeless people working in 2019, but only 7,670 were working last year, Ministry of Health and Welfare data showed.
The ministry said this was due to businesses temporarily suspending their operations or downsizing, resulting in less demand during the pandemic.
Photo: Taipei Times
Last year, 35 percent of homeless people in Taipei lived on the streets because they had lost their job or were unable to pay rent, 18 percent did so due to health issues, while 16.5 percent were on had no home because of discord in the family, data from the Taipei City Government’s Department of Social Welfare showed.
The data showed that 76.6 percent of homeless people lived in the six special municipalities last year, with Taipei recording the highest number of homeless people.
Regarding income, 51.4 percent had part-time jobs, 27.3 percent received charity and 20.9 percent received welfare subsidies, the data showed
More than 70 percent of the part-time jobs homeless people had last year involved menial labor, such as newspaper deliveries, cleaning or standing on curbs holding advertisements for real-estate agencies.
Most homeless employees often work menial jobs and were often the first to be dismissed during the pandemic, Homeless Taiwan Association secretary-general Lee Ying-tzu (李盈姿) said.
She said the government should relax the definition of employment and make work hours more flexible for people without homes.
“Even if they were to work for half a day, or only four hours a day, they would make NT$500, which could help them feed themselves,” she said.
Most homeless people have little to no education and many jobs require degrees, Lee said.
Many of those who employ part-time staffers overlook the health issues people without housing might have, which could prevent them from meeting expectations, she said.
Employers should have more patience with homeless people and give them more time to become accustomed to the job, she added.
Civic groups also said that only 5 percent of people without homes in Taipei are registered as low-to-middle-income individuals.
Do You A Flavor founder Wu Yen-te (巫彥德) said that most homeless people are not lazy, but are caught in a vicious cycle: They have no home and so are discriminated against by employers, meaning they are unable to find work and have no funds to find shelter.
Housing prices are a public concern, but very few people pay equal attention to whether rental prices are reasonable or affordable, he added.
“Being homeless on the streets isn’t bad, but the worst thing is that you seem invisible on the crowded streets,” Wu quoted a homeless person as saying.
Each homeless person has a story, and often, just being there, listening to them, offering a smile and a simple “How are you doing?” can bring greater warmth than material aid, he said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS