First all-in-one senior retirement communities plan makes City senior-friendly
As senior population gradually increased, New Taipei City Government became the first Taiwanese city to create a plan for building all-in-one senior retirement communities to respond to potential issues. Mayor Eric Chu indicated that the lead to formulate complete regulations and related policies by the City Government had done the first important step, and it was predicted to build at least two retirement communities funded by private sectors before the end of 2014.
Economic Development Department Commissioner Ye Huiqing said at the Municipal Meeting that the building retirement communities plan would be all-in-one to take care of seniors with a variety of health conditions, and it was hoped that businesses could integrate healthy senior housing, retirement centers, long-term care centers and nursing centers to offer full accommodation and assistance services for living, so elders could live in peace there.
Chu said that for those who were thinking of investing senior housing, they were worried about getting land development permits the most; It usually took from 5 to 10 years to run through all the required procedures, but now it was shorten to between 3 weeks and 1 year and 2 months, which showed the high administration efficiency of the City Government and its will to assist businesses in removing their investment obstacles.
Chu simultaneously directed Public Health Department, Social Welfare Department and Public Works Department to quickly formulate respective measures for the application flows of building senior housing regulations, retirement centers and care centers, so businesses who were interested could completely know the schedule and progress, and they would become more willing to invest.
The Economic Development Department indicated that there were roughly 353,000 elders in New Taipei City until the end of 2012, and it accounted for 8.97% of total population. Now it was an aging society, and the number of elders kept increasing yearly. Also, according to the population census dada of 2010, 13,8000 elders did not live with their children in New Taipei City whereas New Taipei retirement houses could only hold 1640 people, so potentially the demand was far greater than the supply.
The Economic Development Department said that for attracting private sectors to invest in senior retirement communities, Urban and Rural Development Department offered additionally 10% volume bonus in addition to the current 30% volume bonus for senior housing. Businesses could also participate in “New Taipei Private Investment Bonus Supplementary Plan” which offered them 5 million for 5 years bonus the most.
The department emphasized that the City Government would open one window, and would create projects with professional staff to help accelerate businesses’ application flow; also, it would establish united review team and investment report control system to manage case processing times and to eliminate investment obstacles for private sectors. Afterwards, associated information searching platform and the system for matching and uniting different industries would be set up to diligently help different industries to interact. Industry-academic cooperation system would also be set up to foster sufficient and professional care staff and to actively build a senior-friendly city.