PUBLIC HOUSING IN SINGAPORE : DEMAND AND SUPPLY ASPECTS

Abstract

Much has been written about the achievements of public housing in Singapore. Much praise, both from top offiuials of foreign governments as well as our own government, has been showered on the nation for the success of its housing programme. The Housing and Development Board has done a magnificent job. Singapore is now among the very few countries in Asia (Others being Hong Kong and Japan) which have a rate of housing production approaching the desired target of eliminating the existing backlog and at the same time catching up with the demand as caused by the future increase of the population. However, there are still inadequacies in the present housing programmes, and it is the intention of this dissertation to study those inadequacies and the possible corrections. A ten year period of 1966-1975 has been chosen so that whatever in-adequacies may arise at the end of the third five-year programme of the HDB, could be immediately rectified or taken into consideration in planning for its fourth five-year programme. The basic inadequacy will be the excess of needs over supply. The supply will be the actual number of housing units constructed plus the estimated number to be completed under the third five-year programme. The demand for public housing is quantified from two points of view: (a) from the estimation of the social needs from 1966-1975. (b) from the projection of the number of applicants up to 1975. It is the government's policy to eliminate the socially unacceptable dwellings and to provide new and better homes. Sub-standard conditions of living are to be eradicated by the public housing programme. It should be noted that whereas nearly all the social needs could be satisfied only by public housing, (because of high cost of private housing), not all the applicants for public housing can be considered as needy cases. Therefore, the estimated demand from projected number of applicants will of necessity be much greater than the demand from social needs in housing. This would thus reveal to us how much the existing deficit in housing has been rectified and to uhat extent are we providing for the increase in demand due to natural increase of the population.