Department of Urban Development, Taipei City Government

In order to solve the issue for disadvantaged families with renting housing and to effectively distribute resources, Taipei City Government will effectuate a new plan called “Government-controlled Rent and Management plan for Empty Residential Houses.” It provides matching housing services and hires professional firms to act as landlords and tenant agents. It aims to provide hosting and renting services during the lease for the landlord. On the tenant side, it aims to provide regular home care visits and assistance when applying for social welfare services and resources. This way it fully grasps the tenant rental situations by eliminating the landlord tenant management with the disadvantaged as well as unstable rent charges. This will increase the willingness for the tenants to take care of the disadvantaged and let the whole transaction process be smooth and safe. It meets the goal of providing easy rental for the landlords and caring for the tenants.
At the end of 2012, Construction and Planning Agency’s started a plan “to develop incentives to let homeowners give out empty residential space for residential house feasibility.” The research result shows 25% of the interviewees agreed with “guaranteed not to increase tax burden,” 19% agreed with “guaranteed to not deal with tenants problems,” and the other 19% agreed with “government guaranteed management and rental plans.” Deputy Mayor Chang said that the disadvantaged tenants cannot wait for the landlord tax relief issues. At the same time, the city government is promoting a plan called “empty residential housing management and rental.” This plan hopes to let professional firms develop a monthly rental fee under NTD $18,000 to be subsidized by the government regarding lease to tenants, brokers’ fees, notary fees and related administrative expenses. In addition the professional firms will provide landlords 'two-year' free rent, escrow services, recruiting tenants, signing lease, rent collection, repairs to clarify responsibilities and funding allocation to resolve renting disputes.
On the other hand, professional firms will act as agent for disadvantaged tenants. According to each individual case, they will assist with care visits and also assist to apply for rent subsidy or municipal social welfare-related resources. This will solve the problem of instability of disadvantaged tenants having to pay rent. Essentially, this new plan will ease the whole process because the professional agents will be the intermediary handling all the complications from both the landlord and the tenant sides.

The Department of Urban Development has expressed that the Government-controlled Rent and Management Plan will start looking for professional firms in January 2014. It will start in March for duration of two years. This plan will develop about 100 legitimate residential units; and will be leased to low-income households, social welfare organizations, low-to-medium income families, families with special conditions, elderly who live in low-income households allowance or disability living allowance, family child care subsidy crisis or disadvantaged families with children and adolescents. This plan expects a proactive approach from the Taipei City Government in order to achieve city housing revitalization and to support disadvantaged families.