TOUR OF THE HABITAT WORLD SEEN BY CIVIL SOCIETY

Taiwan

#Mots-clés : Eviction Dernière mise à jour le 7 June 2019
This page has been translated with Google Translation

URBANIZATION

Capture d’écran 2016-01-06 à 11.55.56

History of cities – Heritage

Urban Housing

Rural Housing

LEGAL ASPECTS

Right to Housing

The Right to Housing is not in the Constitution. Only freedom of residence and of change of residence are recognised in the Constitution.

An other legal provisions for the right to housing is the “Housing Act“. But this Act only covers the aspects of adequate housing and housing discrimination, without security of tenure and anti-eviction. (Source : Taiwan Alliance of Anti-Forced Eviction) (1)

Forced Eviction

The people without land ownership often faces the threat of invisible evictions through the redistribution schemes without legal protection of resettlement rights. In general, current development projects in Taiwan could hardly fit the legal protection under ICESCR. Especially, most of the projects are conducted for the causes of real estate investment; it lacks effective legal procedure to verify the public interest and necessity of the means of development. (Source : Taiwan Alliance of Anti-Forced Eviction) (1)

What do social movements to face evictions ? citizen’s participation, participatory planning, blockade to the construction/ demolishment, boycott, lobbying… etc. (1)

Capture d’écran 2016-01-06 à 12.42.24“Three tribes are lack of legal ownership, as kwong wah community. The government has repeatedly been stronger. Anyway, multiple self-reconstruction show their strong resistance and vitality.” To know more

USEFUL TOOLS:

Land Rights

Article 143 of Constitution: “…private ownership of land, acquired by the people in accordance with law, shall be protected and restricted by law. …”

There is no particular law made for the right to land. Only some articles to restrict the invasion of property right from state in related acts.

Land Grabbing

Taoyuan Aerotropolis is the biggest project of zone expropriation in Taiwan. The project requires a total of 3,200 hectares land acquisition and over 40,000 people have to be relocated. (1)

What do social movements to face land grabbing ? Participating in public hearing procedure, developing citizens’ participatory planning, block the demolishment, boycott, lobbying. (1)

USEFUL TOOLS

Vulnerable Groups

Some Interesting Practices

  • COOPERATIVES : Some informal settlements (such as Xiao-hsing Community in Taipei and San-Ying urban indigenous community) are trying to establish cooperative housing and self-sustained social economic programme, but those programmes are still under process.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS

Housing Market

According to the 2015 Q4 statistics released by Ministry of Interior, Taiwan, the average rate of mortgage burden reaches 36.36%. The ratio of house price to income is 8.69 times. In this regard, the average cost of housing in Taipei City even reaches 15.01 years of average income. (1)

According to Ministry of Interior, the average homeownership rate reaches 79.2% in 2012. In the statistics of 2014, about 61% population are self-owned homeowners, 24% population are tenants. (1)
Source: http://pip.moi.gov.tw/V2/E/SCRE0101.aspx

Quality of Housing

According to a 2013 government commission report, about 170,000 households (about 3% of all households of Taiwan) are living under official housing quality standards. (1)
Housing quality standards in Taiwan:
http://www.cpami.gov.tw/chinese/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15748&Itemid=57

Informal Housing / Slum / Homeless

Informal settlements

According to the official report, there are at least 37,794 houses built before 1963. (1)

Urban indigenous communities

According to the official report, there are 20 communities, contain about 618 households. (1)

Homeless

According to the official report last year, there are about 5,000 homeless people in Taiwan. But the number of official report is underestimated, since the report only surveyed the homeless in parks, stations and sidewalks. But the hoemless people in shelters, internet cafes, fast food restaurants and stores are not included in the survey. (1)

ROLE OF PUBLIC AUTHORITIES

Public – Social Housing

a) social housing, rent allowance, mortgage interest rate subsidies
b) social housing is too few and too expensive to protect housing rights

ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS

Bibliography & Sitography

  1. Informations given by the Taiwan Alliance of Anti-Forced Eviction

HABITAT AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Capture d’écran 2016-01-06 à 12.34.26Photo Credit : Taiwan Alliance of anti-forced eviction

Major Problems

According to the TAIWAN ALLIANCE OF ANTI-FORCED EVICTION :

  • The major problems include severe land speculation, property-led housing policy and urban planning, and the deterioration of housing rights that mainly infringed by the state authority.
  • Moreover, in response to the housing problems, the only consensus of current government and (opposition) politicians is to build more (semi-)social housing.

Major Claims

According to the TAIWAN ALLIANCE OF ANTI-FORCED EVICTION :

  • Anti-forced eviction and aim for zero-eviction

 

Civil Society Actors