Asian housing professionals have a special relationship with ISHF – International Social Housing Festival 2023, as they were part of the very first ISHF and look back on a long lasting and fruitful collaboration with Amsterdam practitioners, like the late Jeroen Van der Veer. Great to find out that Yi-Ling Chen, associate professor at University of Wyoming, put together a program of housing specialists working in #Taipei, #Tokyo, #HongKong and #Seoul, giving updates on affordability and provision of affordable housing.
The first presenter, Kuo Chung Wei, introduced us in the ‘miracle of Taipei’, as Chen coined, meaning that the city has build a significant stock of now 2% of the total stock and growing to 5% in the nearby future. A robust model was created to finance, construct and operate social housing. This enabled developers to create more diverse projects, breaking with the monotonous stereotypical image of social housing, including social services in the buildings and encouraging neighbors to care for each other.
The second presenter, Geert Kornatowski of Kyushu University explained the challenges in #Japan, which are totally different. Japan faces a incredibly fast ageing population. Between 10% and 20% of the houses in Japanse cities are abandoned, in particular in the inner city. There are no non-profit social housing providers. Actually ‘social housing’ barely exists. Vulnerable Japanese groups that need support in housing receive subsidy from the government. Compared to other Asian countries, this subsidy is relatively high. This type of voucher system enables landlord to refurbish run down areas and provide housing.
Third presenters from Hong Kong introduced us to the challenge in their city. Accessibility to social housing is getting more difficult over the years. In 10 years time, the minimum waiting time has risen from 1 to 6 years. To tackle the shortage of housing, the current administration plans to build 30.000 temporary flats, next to planning more permanent projects that will be completed in 5 years time.
(this article is part of a series of blog articles for the ISHF live blog website, in collaboration with Housing Europe)
Pepijns Post 