The Cabinet has approved amendments to the Housing Act designed to help meet President Tsai Ing-wen’s goal of expanding social housing. Tsai plans to create enough social housing for 200,000 families in the next eight years.
The amendments to the law raise the quota of social housing reserved for disadvantaged people above 30%, make it easier for the government to create social housing projects, and allow residents to rent social housing rather than buy it. Landlords will also be encouraged to rent out extra apartments as social housing in return for lowered taxes on their income from rent.
The amendments set standards for rent on social housing, with renters placed in different brackets depending on their level of need. To keep a stigma from developing around social housing projects, the government says that quotas on the number of disadvantaged families will be applied overall to housing projects in a given city or county, and not to individual housing units.