Ren Mei-ling (任美玲), wife of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), promised to provide subsidies to student renters in their property on Taipei’s Yangmingshan (陽明山), Hou’s campaign staff said yesterday.
Hou has been accused of exploiting renters during his election campaign over his family’s Kaisuan Condominium (凱旋苑) near Chinese Culture University.
At a news conference in Taipei, Hou’s campaign team presented a letter from Ren in which she vowed to convert the 103-room building, which she inherited from her father, into social housing for young people.
Photo: CNA
“My family has legal ownership of the property, and we legally refurbished it into a condominium,” she wrote in the letter.
Everything related to the property is legal and the family has paid tax on the rental income, she said.
As the property has been managed by Shin-Kong Life Real Estate Service Co (新壽大廈管理維護公司) since 2019, the family has not been involved in increasing rents, she said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
When the management agreement ends in June 2026, the family would convert the property into social housing units for young people, she said.
Although the family cannot change the rents under the management contract, they would seek to subsidize a portion of students’ rents with aid of NT$6,000 per month for single rooms and NT$7,000 for doubles, she said.
Students and advocates on Monday protested outside the building, saying that Hou’s family was profiting off of students, with rents rising annually by at least 5 percent.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) spokeswoman Michelle Lin (林楚茵) said that Kaisuan Condominium is registered under Yoyu Co Ltd (又昱實業有限公司), which is headed by Hou’s daughter Hou Yu-fan (侯昱帆).
The company in 2011 signed a 15-year contract with Chinese Culture University to provide housing for students, and in that time, Hou You-yi’s family had made more than NT$300 million (US$9.72 million) from the property, Lin said.
She also said that the company subdivided the building into 99 separate addresses to avoid paying property taxes.
“Since obtaining the property’s operating license in 1997, Hou’s family has evaded paying tax for 26 years, for about NT$4 million in total,” she said.
“Many students cannot afford the condominium’s high rent, with its yearly 5 percent increases, so they want to terminate their rental agreements, but Yoyu would not let them,” DPP Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) said.
Hou You-yi’s campaign deputy director Hsieh Cheng-ta (謝政達) filed a judicial complaint against DPP members, alleging that they contravened election laws by erecting billboards with photographs of Hou You-yi that said he earned NT$20 million per year from student renters.
DPP spokesman Chang Chih-hao (張志豪) said Hou You-yi should explain how he can support housing justice while also profiting from student renters.
“Hou cannot evade these questions. People are seeking clarification on his family’s properties, which runs contrary to his voiced support for housing justice,” Chang said.
Chang said that yearly rent increases of 5 percent with compound interest would add up to NT$20 million over the past few years, adding that Hou You-yi should explain if that amount is correct.
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or