A/HRC/34/51 tax.81 The City of Vancouver recently approved a 1 per cent tax, which would apply to both foreign and domestic investors, on vacant homes in order to address the issue of approximately 20,000 vacant homes in its overheated speculative housing market. Net revenue from those taxes is to be invested in affordable housing initiatives. 82 71. Elsewhere, taxes on luxury properties have been instituted. Singapore imposes an 18 per cent property sales tax 83 and an additional buyer stamp duty on wealthy property owners and investors, with revenues used to subsidize homeownership of low-income individuals. 84 A number of jurisdictions, including China, Germany and Malaysia, have introduced a property speculation tax. 85 Tax in China, announced in early 2013 after renewed speculative activity in the housing market, involves a straight 20 per cent on capital gains,86 and in Taiwan Province of China, residential property owners are taxed 15 per cent on the sale price of their property if they sell it within one year of purchase and 10 per cent if sold within two years. 72. Some Governments have chosen to encourage a more inclusive approach to private investment in housing in the form of financial incentives to encourage the development of affordable units. The Government of Algeria, for example, finances the development of rental housing for households earning less than 1.5 times the minimum wage, on free government land. It also provides a lease-to-own programme for households with little down-payment capacity.87 Other Governments require that developers include a proportion of affordable units. The Mayor of London recently announced that builders will be required to ensure that 35 per cent of new homes that are built are genuinely affordable. 88 73. Those types of programmes or agreements must be properly designed and monitored in order to be effective. For example, definitions of “affordability” do not always reflect actual income levels of those in housing need and accountability mechanisms to ensure that developers deliver are rarely in place. Additionally, agreements to include affordable housing within developments have sometimes resulted in the stigmatization of tenants occupying the affordable units. Referred to as the “poor door” phenomenon, low-income tenants are segregated from the more affluent residents, compelled to use separate, less attractive entrances and segregated services, such as laundry facilities and waste bins. 89 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 20 British Columbia, Ministry of Finance, “Additional property transfer tax on residential property transfers to foreign entities in the Greater Vancouver Regional District: Property Transfer Tax Act” (27 July 2016). Available from www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/taxes/property-taxes/property-transfertax/forms-publications/is-006-additional-property-transfer-tax-foreign-entities-vancouver.pdf. See City of Vancouver, “Empty homes tax”. Available from http://vancouver.ca/home-propertydevelopment/empty-homes-tax.aspx. Ibid. See Sock-Yong Phang and Matthias Helbie, “Housing policies in Singapore”, Asian Development Bank Institute Working Papers, No. 559 (Tokyo, Asian Development Bank Institute, 2016). Available from www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/181599/adbi-wp559.pdf. Andrew Heywood and Paul Hackett, “The case for property tax speculation”, Smith Institute discussion paper (Smith Institute, 2013), p. 12. Available from https://smithinstitutethinktank.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/the-case-for-a-property-speculationtax.pdf. Ibid. See Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa, “2014 Yearbook: housing finance in Africa: a review of some of Africa’s housing finance markets” (South Africa, November 2014). Available from www.housingfinanceafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/CAHF-14.11.2014-small.pdf. See Dave Hill, “Sadiq Khan sets out key plans for more ‘genuinely affordable’ London homes”, Guardian, 29 November 2016. See Hilary Osborne, “Poor doors: the segregation of London’s inner-city flat dwellers”, Guardian, 25 July 2014.