The Housing Act (住宅法) needs to be amended to address soaring housing prices and a lack of land, which contribute to the problem of an inadequate number of social welfare housing units, lawmakers across party lines said yesterday.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) criticized the government’s policy of selling land, saying that such methods only drive housing prices up and result in an insufficient supply of social housing.
Such policies would create income in the short term, but inevitably undermine housing justice in the long run, he told a news conference held with Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuo Kuo-wen (郭國文) and Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Mach Ngoc Tran (麥玉珍)
Photo: Taipei Times file
The Housing Act should be amended so that existing policies for sectional expropriation and city rezoning would help increase the number of such housing units, and provide the public with safe and relatively affordable housing, Niu said.
Short-term profits should not blind the government, and it should instead make long-term plans, Mach said.
Urban renewal projects and land expropriation by sectors should set aside sufficient land for city governments to construct social welfare housing, she said.
The government’s land development policies have been unable to bring down housing prices and have resulted in more people being unable to afford housing, she said.
She urged the government to include social welfare housing in its rezoning policies and secure low-to-middle-income groups’ rights.
Organization of Urban Re-s secretary-general Peng Yang-kai (彭揚凱) at the news conference said previous social housing policies had limited effects, and limited land and slow constructions are the main challenges.
Peng said the act should be amended so that existing sectional expropriation and urban rezoning policies could be combined to ensure that social housing projects receive the necessary plots of land.
Land Administration Agent Association honorary president Lin Wang-ken (林望根) said that the amendments should clearly state that land development plans have to include social housing.
The amendments would allow local governments to have a legal basis to plan and build social welfare housing, he said.
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