Taiwan News
Date; 2015-12-06
By:  George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Reporter

KMT presidential candidate Eric Chu advised caution in the government’s effort to strike at real estate

speculation in Taiwan during “a talk with the youth,” which brought 2016 presidential candidates to meet with student representatives on Sunday.

The meeting with the youth was hailed as an advance presidential debate before the real ones come. The meeting, attended by KMT presidential candidate Eric Chu, Democratic Progressive Party vice presidential candidate Chen Chien-jen and People First Party presidential candidate James Soong, was organized by 7 universities in Taiwan and took place in NTU Sports Center.

Taking about the issue of high housing prices, Chu said the government can build social housing, but finding spaces would be a problem, particularly in the Greater Taipei area.

Instead, he said that it is more practical to release the 360,000 empty apartments in the Greater Taipei area to young people, and to accomplish this objective, tax reform would be very important. The government would provide young people with rent subsidies at first for renting houses, and after 5 years the government would instead offer interest subsidies on housing loans to help them buy homes.     [FULL  STORY]