SINGAPORE'S HOUSING PROVISION SYSTEM: DEVELOPING THE HDB RENTAL HOUSING MARKET

Abstract

There has been a growing trend of alarming housing problems associated with the low income and elderly households that are the target groups for this research paper. The current housing provision system, specifically the HDB rental sector in Singapore is unable to resolve these problems; especially those related to high homeownership and they are mainly a result of demographic changes, the ever-increasing income disparity and more importantly, the limitations of existing housing policies. Thus this calls for new housing policies, specifically a public rental sector, to be introduced to alleviate these issues. A stimulation on how a low-income household services its housing mortgage using CPF is analyzed to highlight the issue of unaffordable homeownership. Personal interviews with low-income households residing in 2 room HDB flats were also conducted to extract and understand a common man’s perspective on homeownership affordability issues. As a result, an entirely new housing sector, namely a public rental housing market by HDB is proposed to solve these problems based on the success of similar markets and sectors in foreign countries such as Germany, Switzerland and Hong Kong. Certain housing policies in these countries are also considered and modified so as to be feasible and implementable in Singapore’s context. However, although such rental policies are successful overseas, it does not necessarily mean they are feasible and easily implementable in Singapore and can be directly imitated. Thus, they were reviewed and analyzed to determine whether they are suitable in the local context and only those deemed fit were selected. Lastly, recommendations on potential future housing policies and structures were offered with the aim of helping ease the problems related to Singapore’s high homeownership rates.