ST : Why public housing must remain primary

Nov 18, 2010

Why public housing must remain primary

· How did the idea to remake whole HDB estates come about?

We saw the new estates coming up, better than the old ones, and the comparison was very stark. So we have implemented - for more than 10 years now - all sorts of schemes to upgrade the old estates. I remember before the 1997 election, I announced the plans for upgrading the whole of Ang Mo Kio town. We included the Main Upgrading Programme, Interim Upgrading Programme, and spelt out how neighbourhoods would be done up. And progressively, over the years, we did that.

But we looked at it again a couple of years ago, as we were building the new townships, and found that unless we did still more, contrast was going to be even greater. You have to hold out hope that progress is not just for somebody else, but that the Government has not forgotten you, and will look after you also.

So we asked ourselves what we could do, on an estate basis, for the older townships, to bring them up. And it is partly the individual housing blocks, which are important, because that is where the people live in.

But it is also the estate amenities - the schools, the park connectors, the shops, businesses, jobs and industries around - so people can enjoy a complete living environment without having to travel too far.

We felt that if we put our minds to it, this is a programme which can take us forward 15, maybe 20 years, maybe even longer. Because it's a very major job to do this, it is not something you can do within five years.

It takes major investments, you need a certain consistency to keep this line and progressively build on it over time. And you can do this all over Singapore. I think it is a major plus if we can promise this, and deliver this. So we launched the project.

· But are you not raising expectations of public housing even further?

Nothing is automatic. It really depends on people working hard, making the economy grow and electing a government that can deliver. If the economy fails, there are no surpluses, or the government is incompetent, then nothing will happen, and you will be in the same situation as so many other countries. But if we can deliver it, I think we can achieve a quality of life that is quite unique almost anywhere in the world.

· Some people have argued that we should be making the transition away from the heavy reliance on public housing, now that most people have had their basic housing needs met. What do you think of this view?

I understand the aspiration of young people to say, I have arrived, I want to be in a private property, or even landed property. But from an overall societal point of view, there are great advantages to having high-quality public housing.

The alternative to this is consciously to target public housing to cater to the lower end, and make all those who are doing well live in private housing.

Then instead of providing more land for Punggol 21, we could just sell the land in Punggol and developers could build condos there for sale, or even rental, and the majority of people would live in such private estates and take care of yourselves.

But apart from the fact that the HDB can build a better town than the private sector, the tenor of an HDB town is also different from that in private housing. We can arrange a greater degree of integration, and there are social restraints we can encourage which are helpful.

For example, in public estates, we have not allowed each precinct to be ringfenced, so that there is a certain commons on the ground, and you can wander anywhere, it is open, it is one community.

In a private estate, every project, every condo is a little island unto itself, and you don't venture into the condo next door. It's a different atmosphere altogether.

Also, there is the very important issue of ethnic integration. We can integrate our public housing estates, by imposing the ethnic quota requirements on flat buyers. It is one of the conditions that people accept when they buy an HDB flat, and it is crucial for Singapore to have this.