VIABILITY OF A UPGRADING-PLUS-SALE PACKAGE FOR HDB & TWO-ROOM RENTAL FLATS

Abstract

The provision of public rental flats by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) has been on a steady decline ever since the government introduced the Home-Ownership Scheme ( HOS ) in 1964. Together with a further decision to stop constructing rental flats in 1984, it has resulted in the nation's HDB rental population diminishing to a mere 46,000 households in 1996. Today, despite having the majority of the Singapore's population residing in purchased HDB flats, the government is still actively trying to promote the HOS among the remaining HDB rental households by introducing a 4-pronged approach recently to help the poorer HDB rental households. While this 4-pronged approach has met with reasonable success so far, there is still a significant group of poorer HDB rental households who still could not afford to purchase their own HDB flats and have no choice but to continue to live in the small 1-room or 2-room subsidised HDB rental flats. This study therefore attempts to analyse the possibility of implementing a proposed package that could help to enlarge the size of these HDB rental households' flats while assisting them in purchasing these flats at the same time.