Heavy short-burst rainstorms keep flooding Taipei, and a city councilor says the current flood-gate subsidy program is failing the people who need it most.

• Taipei councilor Lin Hsing-erh wants the city to buy portable flood barriers and lend them out alongside sandbags.
• The city's fully funded flood-gate program has collapsed in uptake — over a thousand households signed up in 2024, but only a few hundred since, and almost none have finished installing.
• Old apartment buildings without management committees are the problem: installing a gate at the ground-floor entrance needs every resident to agree.
• Landlords also resist, worried the gates block deliveries and mark the building as a flood zone that will sell for less.
• Sandbags are the current fallback, but they are heavy and hard for residents to move.

Outlook: The civil affairs department says it will look into buying barriers, though it notes they only work on flat ground and still need sandbags to hold them down.