Discrimination as foreigner apartment owner

Taiwan Discrimination in Taiwan
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Hi everybody, I want to share a quite odd experience and also ask advice about how to deal with it.

Im a foreigner, marriage APRC, and I bought an apartment in Taiwan a couple of years ago.

As You may know in Taiwan the building collect monthly fees from each apartment and have a apartments owners committee (usually 5/6 peoples) elected each year by a owners general meeting which will manage this money for the necessary expenses during the following year (repairing, fixed costs etc).

Last year I was elected, among others , in fact because me and my wife, who has quite long experience in such kind of committees in other buildings, exposed at this general meeting some suspicious situations about past management results.

After we got in charge my wife checking past years accounting documents find out several proofs of bad use of our building money, such as giving maintenances jobs to companies in friendly relationships with previous committee members (who happened to be in maintenance business), no official invoices and many other stuffs: nothing probably so bad to justify a criminal case but lets say with strong evidences of money spent largely (700% more than previous years average) and being used to make someone friends happy.

Now the old committee members start to panic, at least about the perspective to lose this chance to make such kind of money personal use in future, so they are trying to stop us with several attempts, the last of which is to call an extraordinary general meeting and propose to make impossible for whoever do not speak Chinese (only me in the building) to be part of such committee.

Now a part the fact that is clearly just a pretext being in fact my Taiwanese wife acting in my behalf in all meetings, this would be a clear discrimination act and to try to limit this people future misconducts I would like to sue them in a most effective way.

A part to go to a lawyer , I will do that, is there in Taiwan some governmental authority to which I can relate to in order to protect my owners rights as foreigner?

Thanks for any constructive advices

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In Taipei, seems to be the Construction Management Office

https://english.dba.gov.taipei/cp.aspx?n=2650C56A219EE31A

Apartment Buildings Section (38) : Management of apartment buildings and supervision of apartment building management committees; real-time removal of dangerous signboards; demolition of abandoned signboards (or empty metal supports); signboard management; planning and execution of signboard embellishment and replacement; and removal of illegal signboard

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Thanks, any specific authority for foreigner protection against discrimination? In general , not related to building matter

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I don’t know that there’s any legal provision against discrimination on the basis of language ability. In general there’s the Immigration Act Article 62

Immigration Act - Article No Search/Content Search Result - Laws & Regulations Database of The Republic of China (Taiwan).

This is not inviolable in specific situations where personal characteristics are deemed to be important in the matter at hand, in my experience.

I would think that the fact that you were elected to the position under the rules and (I’m presuming) a post-hoc rule is being devised to pull you off the committee could raise some questions.

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yes exactly

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Just a small recommendation on being careful in future interactions with this committee. Somebody might try to cover their tracks by diverting blame so take an extra look and copies of all documents, Meeting minutes etc. before signing/agreeing

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Sometimes in such situations a knowledgeable hint (“Gee I understand the problem with my language ability but I was elected. I might have to ask the Taipei City Construction Management Office about this.”) can tactfully resolve problems. Nobody wants those umm dedicated civil servants poking around :slight_smile:

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how did that turn out @Sandokan ?

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Turns out, he was living in the same building as Ko we jhe.

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After many meetings, fights and dramas, I realized that in Taiwan the condo are a special world where Taiwan laws do not apply. The fact that the condo money, instead of professional administrators, are managed by a group of apartments owners elected, acting with no clue about how to do the job, supposedly for free, creates nightmare scenarios where only people with some way to get some money out if it are interested in getting involved.

Normal people avoid to get elected knowing the sad reality, only lads with some connection with repairing companies push to get elected in order to get some pay back, deciding most amazing activities to get the building better.

Only when the condo money are all spent then no one want to get involved at all.

It is a guarantee formula to get tons of malpractice and neighbors fighting each other.

The condo written rules, which each building have, are a joke because no sanctions are applicable if someone do not follow them.

No judge accept cases about this kind of litigations because they know there are no real laws to be applied in Taiwanese civil code, so it is just a waste of time. Only if you catch someone receiving the pay back you can think to follow the legal way.

At the end of the day best advice is: never place yourself between a local guy and an easy way to make some extra money

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Sadly not, but the same principle apply: if you do not find the money nothing can be really persecuted

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Apparently not as bad as the US though…

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Hmmm another piece of the puzzle for Taiwanese corruption is unveiled. Very interesting as this seems in some way likely related to the newest TPP corruption scandals (in terms of the way in which laws and practices around realestate work)

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