Navigating Between Limits: The Future of Public Housing in Singapore

Abstract

The People's Action Party government of Singapore, which has been in power without discontinuity since 1959, is committed to a national housing program with universal provision of 99-year leasehold homeownership for all its citizens. Since 1961 to 2013, the Housing and Development Board, the public housing authority, has built more than one million high-rise housing units, accommodating approximately 90 per cent of the citizens and permanent residents, of which more than 85 per cent of the resident households are homeowners. This close to universal provision system has generated a set of perennial competing demands. Among them are (i) in view of the absence of a national pension scheme, the need to enable homeowners to monetize their public housing property to finance the retirement years, (ii) in order to facilitate retirement funding, public housing flats must be allowed to increase in asset values, to keep up with inflation and rising costs of living and (iii) new subsidized flats must be kept affordable for new entrants into the housing market. The management of these competing demands requires constant monitoring and intervention by the state in order to maintain a balance and sustainable system.

Keywords::

• Singapore public housing system
• asset-base social security system
• universal homeownership
• affordability

Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented at the Symposium on ‘Public Housing Futures’, City University of Hong Kong, 22–23 August 2011.

Notes

¹ An individual's CPF is unevenly apportioned into three different accounts: ordinary, medical and special accounts. Only the ordinary account, which constitutes the largest portion, can be used for housing. Housing consumption is about 60 per cent of annual pre-retirement withdrawal from CPF.

²http://www.asiaone.com/Business/My+Money/Property/Story/A1Story20110304-266515.html (accessed 13 October 2011).

³ For details of the CPF system, see Low & Aw (1997). The rate of employer's contribution to older employees is currently under review as the compulsory retirement age is increased from 55 to 62 and beyond.

⁴ In the HDB room typology, kitchen is standard provision and therefore not included in the room-type. A three-room flat is one with sitting room and two bedrooms, a four-room flat has sitting room and three bedrooms and a five-room flat has sitting room, dinning room and three bedrooms.

⁵ From Singapore Statistics ‘Foreign Direct Investments in Singapore by Country/Region, 2005–2009’. http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/themes/economy/biz/foreigninvestment.pdf (accessed 3 November 2011).

⁶ Monthly Digest of Statistics Singapore October 2011, p. 16. http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/mdsoct11.pdf (accessed 31 October 2011).

⁷ Population data extracted from Singapore Statistics official website. http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/latestdata.html#12 (accessed 31 October 2011).

⁸http://www.scribd.com/doc/53562332/National-Solidarity-Party-Manifesto-2011 (accessed 28 October 2011).

⁹ The Workers Party Manifesto 2011, pp. 38–39. http://www.scribd.com/doc/52644250/Workers-Party-Manifesto-2011 (accessed 28 October 2011).

¹⁰ Refer to endnote 2.

¹¹ Several colleagues at the university were caught with this new rule and have decided not to purchase a public housing flat and chose to pay high rents for accommodation.