Clashes over public housing projects and a Taipei Dome project marred Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) report to the Taipei City Council yesterday, with dozens of protesters blocking the entrance to the city council building to urge the mayor to improve communication with residents before drafting policies.
Shouting “Give the supermarket back to us, we don’t want public housing units,” a group of residents of Wenshan District (文山) criticized the city government over its plan to build 174 public housing units in their community despite opposition to what residents perceive as a rushed municipal project.
“The neighborhood is too small to accommodate so many housing units. Poor management of public housing units is also a major concern,” resident Wang Wei-lin (王微琳) said.
Photo: Liu Jung, Taipei Times
Taipei City councilors across party lines, including Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Councilor Lin Yi-hua (林奕華), KMT Councilor Lee Ching-yuan (李慶元) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Councilor Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青), supported the protesters, calling on the city to distribute public housing units throughout the city’s 12 districts proportionally.
Of all 1,500 public housing units in Taipei, Lee said, 1,020 are located in Wenshan District.
“We do not oppose public -housing, but it’s unfair to build all the units in one district. The city government needs a comprehensive plan and must communicate better with local residents,” he said.
At the heart of the controversy is a plan by the city to convert an abandoned supermarket on Wanli Street into a public rental apartment as the first phase of a project to increase the number of affordable housing units throughout the city to 50,000 in the next four years.
Each of the planned public housing units would be about 21 ping (69.4m2) and rent would be about NT$11,000 per month, or about 80 percent of average rent in the area.
Meanwhile, a small group of -environmental activists protested in another corner outside the Taipei City Council against the planned construction project of the Taipei Dome, a 40,000-seat complex that is to be built on the site of the Songshan Tobacco Factory in Taipei.
Leading the protest, Green Party Taiwan spokesman Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) said the city should revoke the contract with Farglory Group and stop the project immediately.
Swamped by protesters and reporters, Hau slowly made his way into the city council building escorted by security guards without offering comments.
“I heard the protesters’ voices and we will examine the projects and see what we can do,” he said.
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