Hello, This is Chan Chun-Chieh from The Organization of Urban Re-s (hereinafter referred to as OURs) and my sharing is comprised of three parts: first I will introduce OURs and how we initiate housing policies in Taiwan, and lastly why and how we are advocating Taiwan housing cooperatives in recent years.
OURs emerged in 1989 during the Non-homeowner Movement in Taiwan. With the focus on urban spatial issues, we have been doing policy initiatives and monitoring, as well as practicing urban planning. In 2010, we formed the Social Housing Advocacy Consortium with the Tsuei Ma Ma Foundation for Housing and Community and some other NGOs to advocate social housing. And yet housing still remained a pressing issue In 2014, so we, together with some more NGOs, initiated the Housing Movement.
2010 was an important moment. In 2009, a government survey found out that the rocketing housing price was the top popular discontent, while salary growth was stagnant. Particularly difficult were the young adults and those with difficulty to afford housing. At this point, housing became a political issue that had to be faced.
图片来源：OURs都市改革组织
图片来源：OURs都市改革组织
Our mode of action consists of four aspects: Grouping, Pressuring, Political Initiative and Advocacy. Grouping is to connect with other NGOs; Pressuring is to organize movement or prottest; Political Initiative relates to the elections; Advocacy is to host salons, forums, visits etc. to attract wider publicity.
It is a deep-rooted belief in Taiwan that housing is not just a place to live but also a commodity to make money. Under such circumstances, we think it’s easier to start with Social Housing to cater for the least advantaged groups, in a way introducing to the general public the difference between buying properties and living. After that, we have recently been engaged in the rental market development, and in the upcoming election next year we hope to advocate the implementation of vacant flat hoarding tax.
I mentioned the moment of opportunity in 2009, from which the idea of Social Housing was first raised in the 2010 election. By the 2012 election, we had successfully advocated the legislation of the Housing Act (2011) and its amendments (2016), and later the Real Estate Price Registration to disclose housing prices with transparency.
The changes began in 2014, when local governments of large cities began to commit themselves to constructing Social Housing during the Housing Movement (before which the social housing was only experimental). Many of these housing projects were built in the past few years and some are completed.
During the elections from 2016 to 2018, we successfully pushed the property tax reform; the government also promised housing reforms and the unified tax on premises. Apart from that, we communicated with candidates on housing issues, and repeated their views to the general public. In the coming years, we will focus on cooperative housing as our key initiative.
We interact with a wide range of political parties. During the elections, we would ask them specific questions and expect them to respond with promises; after the elections, we would monitor the parties to ensure the promises are implemented. It is exactly with the electoral process that we advocate housing advancement in Taiwan.
Back to housing cooperatives, we believe that housing options apart from the government and the market models are necessary. In fact, we found out during the past years of communication that people have different and various housing needs that are not satisfied by the current housing models, which could be broadly summarized as “to live better” and “to afford to live”:
On the one hand, the demographic structure has been changing rapidly: We are faced with an aging population with few children. What used to be a popular belief to expect grown-ups to look after their aged parents is not applicable anymore. At the same time, single households increase, taking up 30% in 2019, fundamentally changing the family structure and thus the social structure. Spaces like 706 runned by people of common ideas emerge, and these communities become the connection among people, more than blood relations.
On the other hand, considering the gap between the stagnant salary and rocketing housing price, unstable rental market as well as the limit of governmental financial support for social housing, we are in desperate need of affordable and stable housing options
Cooperative housing responds to these various needs. It is usually founded by like-minded people as an intentional community, who work together to build a neighborhood of their envisioned lifestyle. Through democratic cooperation, the residents are directly engage in the process of building and maintaining their homes, such as raising funds, search for land, planning, design, construction and community building. In general, cooperative housing has these following qualities in common:
Economic aspect: emphasizing the affordability of housing, that housing is not a speculative commodity, but a place to live;
Social aspect: responding to the transformation of the demographic structure, offering alternative living lifestyles to meet the different needs;
Sharing aspect: sharing of facilities and resources in the housing coops.
In the following table, we have listed the differences among cooperative housing, commercial housing and social housing in various aspects of operation, planning, and affordability:
| 类型 | Private Housing | Housing Co-ops | Social Housing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operational Model | Constructed > Purchase | Raise funds> Construction | Funded and operated by the government |
| Neighbour | Random（whoever can afford） | Signing up（with common values） | Fitting the requirements |
| Planning & Design | Gneral | Collective Design | General |
| Community | Good community> lucky； Bad community > unlucky | Democratic process | Good community> lucky；Bad community > unlucky |
| Affordability | Low | Mid (relatively affordable and stable) | High (affordable but with limitations) |
| Policies required | Balance the market: profit-driven policy-making, emphasising infomation transparency, taxation, financing and other regulation, etc. But in reality heavily subsidised through different types of loans. | Giving incentives: non-profit-driven, without much subsidy. The key is to give the private sector the right amount of incentive to start, creating a positive feedback to keep running. | Heavily subsidised: covering land acquisition, raising fund, construction and operation, etc. In other words, it cannot sustain without government subsidies. |