Chua Beng-Huat
Private Ownership of Public Housing in Singapore
Working Paper No. 63
April 1996
The views presented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the
Asia Research Centre or Murdoch University.
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National Library of Australia.
ISBN: 0-86905-478-3
ISSN: 1037-4612
Social or public housing is unavoidably a political commodity. Inequalities in affordability,
distribution and consumption of housing are intrinsic to market economies, reflecting the class
structure of these societies. The multiple ways in which the market fails to provide adequate
housing for all make state provision necessary, even if interventions were often undertaken
reluctantly. State provision can take different forms: direct provision, subsidies in rent or
mortgage, subsidies on cost of construction undertaken by private developers, concessions to
developers on prices of state land in exchange for a proportion of low-cost housing,
infrastructure upgrading of privately developed squatter areas, or a combination of these
strategies. The actual shape of state provision is largely determined by the ideological system
of the nation in question and the balance of social political forces and economic contingencies
at the points when specific policies were formulated. Hence, the modes of provision are likely
to be divergent across nations (cf., Kemeny, 1992). The actual mode of provision in a particular
nation is best explained historically.
Whatever the actual modes and strategies of intervention, the materially tangible and
highly visible presence of good social housing is a powerful symbolic monument which testifies
to the efficacy of the government in power and thus contributes significantly to its legitimacy to
govern. In spite of this potential for accumulating political legitimacy, as the fiscal crisis of
welfarism deepens in the late twentieth century, continuing shrinkage of social housing appears
to be the norm in capitalist societies. Since the 1980s, retractions from social housing have
become increasingly acute throughout Western Europe and North America; leading analysts
(Cole and Furbey, 1994; Priemus, 1995) point to apocalyptic predictions that social housing
will likely be eliminated completely by the first decade of the twenty-first century.
The failures of social housing have, therefore, become the singular focus of the existing
literature. In addition to the failures of public housing in the U.S. free market system and
council housing of Britain, the list can be extended to include European social democratic
countries, such as Germany and The Netherlands, as they retreat from the extensive social
welfare programs which were instituted after the end of the Second World War. Apocalyptic
predictions of the demise of the idea and practice of social housing are often based on studies of
anyone of these nations. On the other hand, housing problems in Asian and African countries
seldom come in for specific focus. Instead, they tend to be dealt with as part of the problems of
rapid urbanisation in developing economies.
1
In the dichotomous focus on failures in advanced capitalist nations and absence of
specificity in developing nations is the case of Singapore; a non-European and non- American
island nation which has comparatively, a very successful public housing program. This success
has been noted sporadically (Lea, 1987:196) but just as readily dismissed, for several possible
reasons. First, it is recognised as an interesting case (Pugh, 1987) but without many lessons for
other nations on account of Singapore’s smallness (Van Vliet, 1987). Second, the Singapore
case may have been generally analytically neglected because the Singapore polity is generally
perceived as less than democratic and, that all its achievements are assumed to be achieved
under authoritarian and repressive strictures which would not be permissible in the democratic
world. Its success therefore offers little useful lessons to democratic others. Finally, it may
simply be that little is known of the substantive details of the public housing operations in
Singapore. With the exception of the two commemorative volumes, published in 1985,
celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the public housing authority, the Housing and
Development Board, there are few sustained analysis of the program. Without substantive
information it is, of course, difficult to conceptually place the program within the theoretical
discussions on public housing issues.
Whatever the reason, any refusal to conceptually take the Singapore program seriously is
premature because the underlying principles and practices are undoubtedly of comparative
heuristic value. This working paper attempts to insert the Singapore public housing program
into the ongoing conceptual discussions in the field of `housing study’, which constitutes a part
of the wider examination of welfarism in capitalist societies. Its aim is to demonstrate that the
underlying principles and practices of the program bear comparative useful analysis with the
success and failures of other modes of public housing provision. At the practical level, while
recognising that it cannot be replicated in its totality anywhere else in the world, an
understanding of how the Singapore program succeeds would point out where other systems of
provision may have gone wrong and how best to avoid pitfalls.
PUBLIC HOUSING AND ITS FINANCING
Analytically, it is necessary to begin by examining the sources of failure in developed nations.
One reason for the demise of public housing in advanced capitalist nations lies in the definition
of housing as a consumption good. Accordingly to Cole and Furbey, the extensive British
council housing program `has been hedged with contradiction, inconsistency and ambiguity
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from the outset’ (1994: 3) because, within capitalist Britain, housing remains a commodity
which requires and promotes private ownership, rather than a social right. The hegemonic logic
of private property dictates that public housing be limited to a position of contingent response to
market failures in providing affordable housing for all. Public housing is, therefore, always
confined to a residual and marginalised sector within the logic of the market. The changing
depth of state participation in public housing over time is, thus, dependent on shifting balances
of political strengths between private developers and home owners against those who are
marginalised or neglected by the market.
Theoretically, then, only `universal’ provision of public housing can avoid its
marginalisation or `residualisation’; that is, a program which, in principle, does not discriminate
against anyone who wishes to exercise the right to public housing. Indeed, the ideology of
universal provision of social services was espoused in the immediate post-war years in Britain.
However, unlike education and health care, it was never implemented in the case of housing
(Cole and Furbey, 1994: 64). Consequently, the division between private home-ownership and
public housing provision has been allowed to continue in its effect of favouring the former and
marginalising the latter through the politics of welfarism in a competitive commodified housing
market.
However, ideologically instituting housing needs as a social right does not necessarily
solve problems of adequate provision. Without proper financing, the problems may be
aggravated. This is most clearly illustrated by the history of state housing in ex-socialist
economies of Eastern Europe, where housing was legally and ideologically instituted as a social
right. It quickly became obvious that the right could not be implemented because the artificially
low rent levied for state developed housing was so grossly disproportional to the cost of
housing production that provision became a constant drain on national wealth. Consequently,
according to Szelenyi, socialist economic planners came to see housing as a ‘returnless
expenditure’, `a necessary evil to be minimised as far as possible’ (1983:32). A similar burden
of production costs accounts for the shrinkage of public housing provision, as part of the
welfare package, in developed capitalist nations (Pierson, 1994:112).
Between its marginalisation in a capitalist market system and the absence of economic
`realism’ regarding costs in former socialist states, it appears that a public housing program can
hope to succeed only if it were rationalised within disciplining market constraints. That is, the
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program would have to be able to recover production costs, to enable subsequent cycles of
construction and to avoid becoming a constant drain on the national economy.
HOUSING TENURE
Universal state provision of public housing may suggest the destruction of the idea of privatelyowned housing as a market commodity; a belief held by British housing analysts. Grounded in
their own history and experiences, they tend to equate public (council) housing with subsidised
rental housing in contrast with privately developed owner-occupied housing. This dichotomous
conception divides analysts into pro-council rental housing on the political left and pro-private
home-ownership on the right. It also provided the ideological justification for the Conservative
Party government, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to substantially dismantle Britain’s
council housing program by instituting the `right to buy’ policy, in the 1980s. This policy
entitled sitting tenants of rental council housing to purchase dwellings with very substantial
discounts. The result was that more than a million households changed their tenure status from
renting to home-owning (cf., Saunders, 1990).
However, universal state provision is not necessarily antithetical to home-ownership. Its
linkage with rental housing in Britain, as it is elsewhere, is historically contingent, not a logical
necessity. Strictly speaking, universal state provision is one of monopolisation of supply of
housing by the state to the entire citizenry which can be ideologically justifiable in terms of
ensuring affordability of, at least, the first home to a family. Once this monopolisation is
secured by the state, the nature of housing tenure is of lesser concern and can take different
forms, either highly privatised or highly collectivised (Kemeny, 1992:108-126). Conceptually,
therefore, the mode of subsidy and the mode of tenure should be treated as two separate
variables which may be correlated in a multiplicity of ways.
State-built housing can be leased to tenants under different contractual terms, from
monthly rental to long-term leasehold. In the latter case, leases can be traded in the open market
in commodified form in which owners are free to use or dispose of the leases as property rights.
Long-term leasehold home-ownership and marketisation of housing can be relatively
unhindered under the overall umbrella of state direct provision. Market factors will in turn
enable state housing agencies to recover substantial levels of construction costs, within tolerable
margins of subsidy, in order to continue the next cycle of new housing construction.
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Severing the link between public housing and rental housing through long-term leasehold
ownership also avoids a number of other issues which have plagued public-rental housing
programs. The most obvious of these is the stigmatisation of rental housing and its residents, of
which the most extreme form is the ghetto effect that is prevalent in public housing in the
United States. Stigmatisation has made public housing unattractive not only to newly formed
families but also to some segments of sitting tenants themselves.
Second, without a market mechanism, allocation is dependent on the bureaucratic
discretion of housing authorities, leaving at their mercy public housing applicants (cf., Paterson,
1975) and rendering the system highly susceptible to different modes of bureaucratic
corruption, as was the case in the former socialist Eastern European states (Szelenyi, 1983).
There is, therefore, some justification in calling a bureaucratic allocation system one which
`strengthens the power of service producers while disabling and stigmatising the consumers
who are dependent upon them’ (Saunders 1990: 356). With universal provision, allocation can
be rationalised on a first come, first serve basis without undue bureaucratic intervention.
Third, maintenance costs of public rental housing estates tend to be much higher than
those which are owner-occupied. This is largely because of tenants’ neglect of not only
common areas but also the dwelling units themselves; the underlying sentiment is `why should
people be expected to care for the symbols of their own social inferiority’ (Reade, 1982 quoted
in Cole and Furbey, 1994:112). With marketisation, pride of ownership can be restored to
residents who possess long-term leases on state-built housing.
RESETTLEMENT AND REDEVELOPMENT
One of the major obstacles against getting a public housing program off the ground is the need
to clear slums and squatters in order to gain access to land for new housing construction and
related developments. This had been true of the well-established programs, instituted since the
early part of this century in Europe and continues to be true in developing nations. For example,
almost 4 million people were forcefully moved from slums in the period 1930 to 1939, another
600,000 dwellings demolished in the decade 1955-65 and `a further million had been destroyed
through official slum clearance’ by 1976 (Power, 1993:182 and 190). In the face of political and
economic difficulties in land acquisition, municipal initiatives in enforced urban renewal
activities have all but ceased in developed nations. Since the 1980s, in every major city in the
United States, Australia and Western Europe, municipal efforts have been replaced by the
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process of `gentrification’ of inner-city working class and poor neighbourhoods, undertaken by
private developers. Displaced residents from the gentrified areas are often left with even less
recourse than resettlement under municipal renewal schemes (cf., Smith and Williams, 1986).
On the other hand, in contemporary developing nations in Southeast Asia, difficulties of slum
clearance stand in the way of comprehensive urban planning in general and housing programs
in particular.
The central issues around resettlement of households and individuals affected by slum
clearance include lack of adequate financial compensation and housing replacement, often
leaving them just ahead of the bulldozer (cf., Wilson, 1966); disruption of the affected’s
meagre livelihood, which is often tied to local marginal economic opportunities (Environment
and Urbanisation, 1994). Mismanagement of resettlement leads to the further marginalisation
of the underclass, often in spite of the initial enthusiasm of the affected for the prospect of
improved housing over their extant conditions. As a result, evictions and settlement defence
emerge as two sides of the same political and economic problems of resettlement (Aldrich,
1985). The common legacy of failures of resettlement is partly due to the financial and legal
difficulties of appropriating land held under existing property rights. The ability of the state to
appropriate land for public housing construction is thus in part dependent on its ability to
mobilise political resources to override such rights and obligations.
PUBLIC HOUSING AND ITS ENVIRONMENT
Successful resettlement of residents affected by housing and other urban development does not
end with the replacement of housing alone. It extends to the affected’s adaptation to the new
housing forms and housing environment. Determined largely by production cost constraints and
architectural and planning ideologies, new public dwellings tend to be standardised throughout
a neighbourhood, if not an entire estate. Resettlement into the standardised dwellings radically
alters the symbolic universe of the individual households (Cole and Furbey 1994: 111-112).
Affected households, each with its own cultural and symbolic practices in their previous homes
and environment, are expected to accommodate their different practices into the standardised
provisions. In the process, many cultural practices of everyday life have to be reworked into the
new structure and others discarded.
The need and ability of an affected household to adjust is often hindered by restrictive
regulations which are imposed by the housing authorities; not the least of which are the values
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behind the architectural designs and town planning ideologies that are embedded and inscribed
in the layout of the estates and in the standardised dwellings. For example, architectural
modernism demands that the facade of a block be maintained in uniform colour for visual
consistency, reducing residents’ freedom to choose the colours of their dwellings. Structural
elements which fix the layout of the housing unit itself cannot be tampered with, radically
reducing residents’ ability to redeploy the interior spaces provided for them. The restrictions
make it difficult for affected households to break away from the monotony of the standardised
housing units and transform them into individualised `homes’. As the home is tied to the
identity of a household, freedom to individualise will undoubtedly affect the satisfactory
adjustments of the occupants.
As resettlement also inevitably disrupts the community life of the affected, its execution
should, therefore, include the re-establishment of a new residential community. Here again, the
obstacles erected by building design and estate planning to community development have been
extensively documented. High-rise, high-density environment has been commonly chastised for
initiating the destruction of communities and simultaneously encouraging crime infestation, in
nations with a temperate climate (Coleman, 1985; for a cautiously more optimistic view, see
Bulos and Walker, 1987). Critical antagonism towards the, apparently, negative community
development potential of high-rise estates has been etched in public consciousness by the 1972
intentional implosion of blocks of buildings of the award winning Pruitt-Igoe public housing
project in St Louis in the US (cf., Wolfe 1981: 80-2). Indeed, as Power suggests, high-rise has
come to symbolise the problems of mass housing in Europe, `though only in France were a
majority of social housing estates built in large multi-storey blocks’ (1993:5; see also p.196).
Overall, community development in high-rise public housing estates faces an uphill battle
against existing critical opinions.
Criticisms of public housing estates in terms of `home’ making and community
development have, perhaps inadvertently, fall often into the same architectural determinism
which the critics themselves use against architects and planners. For example, criticisms against
high-rise environment is seldom tempered by comparing it with other modes of housing in
terms of community development. There is little evidence that upper middle-class residents of
semi-detached housing on the ground in suburbia are more community oriented than those in a
high-rise environment, on account of their housing design and neighbourhood planning. Indeed,
the failure of high-rise public housing is more often the result of the social composition of the
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residents rather than its physical structures, which are often superior to those of the slums which
they replaced.
Physical design and planning of the public housing estates are obviously important in
their ability to either obstruct or facilitate everyday life cultural practices and community
development. They are, however, not equally deterministic on both counts. As a rule of thumb,
whereas architectural features are capable of obstructing social communications (nothing
obstructs communication better than a solid wall), they are unable to realise social exchanges.
Social practices and communication remain ultimately human activities which can be realised
only by residents themselves. Architectural and planning features constitute, at best, the `stage’
within which individuals enact their lives and cannot be held to be solely responsible for the
failures of community development in any environment. The logic of architectural determinism
aside, satisfying residents’ community concerns will affect their overall appreciation of the
public housing environment. This, in addition to satisfactory cultural adjustment to the dwelling
itself, will in turn affect the sentiments towards the government and its agencies and their
overall legitimacy to administer and govern.
Although drawn significantly from discussions on the British council estate system, the
above conceptual and substantive problems of public housing providing can be distilled from
close examinations of any operating public housing program. Of course, issues peculiar to
specific systems exist; however, the difficulties identified above are likely to inhere in all
systems in varying degrees of seriousness. Nevertheless, the identification and discussion of the
above difficulties are not methodologically instinctive nor innocent. For it is the intention of
this essay to show that the success of public housing in Singapore is the result of precisely
being able to solve the problems identified.
THE PUBLIC HOUSING PROGRAM IN SINGAPORE
The program was initiated in 1960, a year after domestic self-government was obtained from
the British colonial office. Influenced by the social democratic ideology of its British-educated
leaders, the newly elected government of the People’s Action Party (PAP) launched the
comprehensive housing program to improve the material conditions of the everyday life of the
people, as a covenant with its newly enfranchised electorate. The task was entrusted to a new
public housing authority, the Housing and Development Board (HDB). The HDB was given,
and continues to hold extensive powers in all development work - land acquisition,
8
resettlement, town planning, architecture design, engineering work, and building material
production - except the actual construction of the buildings, which is undertaken by private
construction firms. Construction activities proceeded very rapidly. After a brief twelve months
of setting up the necessary bureaucracy, the second year saw the completion of more than 7,000
rudimentary flats, and more than 11,000 under construction (HDB Annual Report, 1961).
The HDB is also responsible for the allocation of the sales and rental flats and, until
recently, the management of all aspects of the housing estates.1 However, setting of sales and
rental prices is undertaken by the Ministry of National Development. Beginning modestly by
providing basic rental units for those who were living in congested shophouses and squats at
edges of the central business district—those who were among the first to be affected by the
physical rebuilding of Singapore, which transformed the city to its modernised present (cf.,
Chua, 1989), a ‘home ownership’ scheme was introduced in 1964, in which an ‘owner’
purchases a 99-year lease on a dwelling instead of owning it permanently. With the leasehold
arrangement, the flat is separated from the land. Land is retained by the state in inalienable
public ownership, leaving it free to compensate and resettle any lessee, if and when
redevelopment is necessary.
A large annual supply of housing has been sustained since then. After three decades, the
HDB has completed more than half a million flats and a substantial volume of related facilities,
such as commercial spaces, recreational facilities and light industrial estates, all within
comprehensively planned new-towns. Currently, more than 85% of the 3 million population
live in public housing, of which about 85% are ‘owner-occupied’.
That an overwhelming majority of the population resides in public housing estates is
testament to the government’s commitment to universal provision.
UNIVERSAL
PROVISION:
DECOMMODIFICATION
WITH
MARKET
RESTRAINTS
The Singapore HBD is committed to universal provision, thus income ceiling for eligibility for
lease-ownership is reviewed and raised periodically, in step with economic growth, to include
up to 90% of the total households in the country.2 In spite of its wide availability, ideologically,
public housing remains a consumer good and not an entitlement or right of citizenship.
Although financially supported by public funds, the HDB behaves administratively as a
private developer. It is free to set guidelines of eligibility for a range of apartment-types that it
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produces. It can draw up standardised contractual terms with applicants/lessees which entertain
no individual variations. Allocation is on a first come, first serve basis. It is free to determine
the level of new housing start-ups, depending on the length of the waiting list, which it uses as a
measure of housing demands. The only restraints are political ones imposed on it by the
government; restraints motivated by the latter’s interest in continuing its legitimacy to govern.
DECOMMODIFICATION
As land cost constitutes a major obstacle to a successful public housing program, the required
land must be decommodified. The 1966 Land Acquisition Act empowers the state to acquire
any land deemed necessary to the interest of national development, with the rate of
compensation fixed by the statute itself. In determining the compensation value, either existing
use or zoned use is considered, whichever is lower; no consideration is given to potential value
of the land for any intensification of use. The primary reasons for paying the excessively low
prices were to curb land speculation and limit the cost of acquisition. The government is
cognizant that the Act violates common laws that govern property rights and there had been no
absence of critics (Koh, 1967). However, in the straight-speaking official language of the
HDB:
The majority of the acquired private lands comprised dilapidated properties or neglected
land where squatters had mushroomed. The government saw no reason why these
owners should enjoy the greatly enhanced land values over the years without any effort
put in by them (Wong and Yeh, 1985: 41).
In a land-scarce city state, the draconian land policy effectively cut down speculation because
every land holding was constantly vulnerable to acquisition. The compensation rate fixed by
statute in 1973 was not adjusted upwards until 1986, when the government deemed that it had
already sufficient land banked for development purposes. By 1995, market rates were paid for
all future acquisition.
In addition to the draconian land policy, a second level of decommodification is effected
by exempting prices of public housing flats from the market mechanism. Soon after the
inception of the policy of universal provision, the HDB became virtually the monopolistic
provider of housing for the nation and the market ceased to be a mechanism in determining the
prices of new HDB flats. Prices are fixed by the government with reference to the general state
of the economy and levels of affordability for different types of flats. This price-fixing had led
to artificially low prices during the first decade of the leasehold-ownership scheme. Sales prices
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set in 1964 were not adjusted till 1974 and rentals not till 1979, although per capita GNP kept
growing annually through those years. The result was a dire need to adjust prices upwards by
about 40% in the early 1980s, spurring a rush of applicants who were afraid that sharp increases
would be the way of the future. However, since then price increases have been rationalised and
adjusted annually.
Until 1987’s budget statement, land costs to the HDB were not reflected in the selling
prices of the flats; subsidies were given for the differences between the construction costs and
the selling prices.3 Several regulations ensure a more equitable distribution of the subsidies. In
the range of public housing flats from 1-room flat to 5-room split-level executive maisonette,
the 1-room and 2-room flats are exclusively for rent and 3, 4 and 5-room flats exclusively for
sale; the smaller the size of flats, the greater the subsidy.4 (Given the greatly improved
economic conditions of Singaporeans, the rental flats are being demolished for lack of takers
and the construction program now builds only 4 and 5-room flats.) To ensure that lower income
groups were not edged out of smaller flats, an income ceiling for each type of flat was imposed;
for example, only households with less than $S800 monthly income were permitted to rent, and
households whose incomes exceed $S1500 were not permitted to buy 3-room flats, but had to
purchase higher flat types. However, in the interest of encouraging households to upgrade, and
evidently higher-income groups are unlikely to purchase small flats, the income ceilings for
sales flats by flat types have been removed, thus further extending provision.
COMPULSORY SAVINGS AND MORTGAGE FINANCING
To finance the massive national housing program, the government has a ready source of capital
in the state-managed, employees’ compulsory social security savings fund, the Central
Provident Fund (CPF). Instituted in 1955, under the scheme, an employee is compelled by
statute to save a certain percentage of his/her monthly income and the employer is required to
contribute the same rate to the former’s savings. The CPF is thus a tax-exempt compulsory
savings fund where ‘an individual’s total benefits are equal to his total contribution plus interest
credited into his account’ (Lim and Associates, 1986:1). Indicative of the rapid economic
growth of Singapore since self-government in 1959, membership in the Fund rose from 180,000
to 1,847,000 in 1984. The rate of contribution for both an employee and respective employer
steadily increased from 5% in 1955 to 25% in 1984. The ceiling of contribution was raised from
$S300 a month in 1971 to $S2500 in 1984. Finally, the contribution received by the Fund
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increased from $S9 million in 1955 to $S5,386 million in 1984. During the 1985-7 mini
recession, the employer’s contribution was reduced to 10%, but increased steadily as the
economy turned around to 20% in 1995. Henceforth, the rate is to be allowed to fluctuate
according to the general health of the economy, thereby acting as a wage regulating mechanism.
The huge national savings in the CPF constitutes the bulk of the national capital
formation. It has enabled the government to:
(i) build up a hefty foreign reserve, which in the late 1980s stood at $S30 billion (Low and
Toh, 1989);
(ii) invest in public housing and urban infrastructure (Castells, Goh and Kwok, 1990: 175);
(iii) invest in state securities which are used to capitalise state-owned companies in strategic
industries and in equity holdings overseas by the Government Investment Corporation
(Castells, Goh and Kwok, 1990:181). As a source for financing public housing
construction, the state draws, through the CPF, from the savings of the people rather
than competes for expensive loans from commercial financial agencies or funding
instruments.
On the consumption side, the very high CPF savings rate has a tremendous effect on the 99year, lease-ownership program. When the program was introduced in 1964, only about 1500
households out of then 11,000 public housing tenants opted for ownership. Then in 1968,
residents were allowed to utilise their CPF to purchase the lease on public housing flats. The
20% down-payment may be drawn from accumulated CPF and the monthly mortgage payments
deducted directly from the monthly contributions. It, therefore, became possible for a family to
own a 99-year lease without suffering any reduction in monthly disposable income. With such
facility, and the fact that the substantial savings can be spent immediately on housing or
withdrawn at retirement, public housing ownership soared (Pugh, 1985). In 1968 alone, 44% of
all public housing applicants elected to buy their flats. By 1970, 63% applied to buy, and in
1986, the figure reached 90%.
The CPF, therefore, constitutes a closed circuit of monetary transfer within the public
housing sector. The huge fund is used to purchase government bonds which is partly used to
finance loans and subsidies to the HDB. The HDB is in turn able to act as the mortgagee for all
the households living in public housing flats, making it the largest mortgagee in the nation with
outstanding loans of $S5.5 billion in 1985 (Tay, 1986). The CPF then acts on the behalf of its
members and pays the HDB via direct deductions from members’ monthly contributions. The
entire process constitutes an internal transfer, with favourable terms of interests on loans for all
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parties, without involving any of the conventional banking processes (Tyabji and Lin, 1987),
nor competing with capital demands in other sectors of the economy.
In 1981, the use of CPF was extended to cover mortgages of private sector housing, also
leading to rapid expansion of home ownership. As a result Singaporeans are among the best
housed population in the world. Now concerns have been voiced by critics that the scheme may
have succeeded a little too well in that it has encouraged over consumption of housing and may
leave many households with little to live out their retirement years (Lim et.al. 1986, Wong and
Yeh, 1985:232-234).
MARKET FORCES AND THE UPGRADING/FILTERING PROCESS
Whereas subsidies and price-fixing are aimed at reducing housing costs, housing consumption
is nevertheless tied exclusively to a household’s ability to pay. The type of flats rented or
purchased is dependent entirely on what the household itself can afford, no other measures of
needs are considered; the consumers must pay for their choices. Here, the market first enters the
system. It motivates families to upgrade housing consumption as their economic circumstances
change for the better. This leads to the filtering down of older housing stock to lower-income
groups.
Such upgrading/filtering was well on its way in the 1970s, ten short years after the public
housing program began. In the last decade, annually between 10,000 and 12,000 households
had moved from rental to owned-flats, and from smaller to larger flats, even to private housing
with prices on average three times that of the equivalent sized public housing flats (Wong and
Yeh, 1985). At the other end, the prices of old 3-room flats have fallen significantly below the
new larger 3-room flats, making them affordable to the lower income groups. For example, for
the first eight months of 1995, 3-room flats constituted 41% of the total resale transaction
(Straits Times, 30 Sept. 1995). With the sustained rate of upgrading, reflecting sustained general
economic growth of Singapore since 1960, the HDB stopped building 3-room flats in 1987 and
began to demolish 1-room and 2-room flats.5 Since then, the smallest new flat constructed has
been the 4-room flat; with three bedrooms and a sitting room, kitchen and toilet facilities, it is
considered the basic minimum for a family of four.
The very impressive upgrading/filtering process is directly encouraged by, and is a
consequence of, HDB’s resale policy. After five years of occupancy, a lease-owner is entitled to
resell it to anyone eligible for public housing, at a price that is agreed upon between themselves,
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without HDB intervention. The vendor keeps all capital gains, tax free, and in turn is permitted
to apply for a new upgraded flat with the proceeds of the sale or move downward and realise
significant financial gains. Here market forces are allowed their full impact in determining the
resale values of the flats. Each household is entitled to do this just once, if it chooses to sell the
second public housing flat, it must move into the expensive private sector. Public housing is
thus an investment good. The resale mechanism has given the masses in Singapore
opportunities to build up equity, instead of being excluded completely from real estate
investments, as in other nations (cf., Saunders, 1990). The upgrading/filtering process also
benefits the HDB because the overall construction subsidy is reduced as larger room-types are
subsidised at a progressively reduced rate.
The 99-year lease-ownership scheme has proved to be one of the strengths of Singapore’s
public housing program: income derived from the sale, rents from commercial and industrial
premises and revenues from ancillary services, like car parks and markets, combine to ensure a
very substantial return from public housing and attendant infrastructure investments. This return
is in turn ploughed back into a new cycle of housing production. The result is that only a margin
of government subsidy is required -about 2% of the annual national development budget
estimates since 1975 (Wong and Yeh, 1985:501).
The strategic combination of decommodification with a limited role of the market
mechanism appears to have satisfied the necessary conditions for a public housing program that
successfully upgrades the housing condition of the entire nation. This strategy is potentially
replicable in all former or continuing socialist nations, where the commitment to universal
housing provision can conceivably be continued within a restructured market-based economy.
Land in such nations is already state-owned and thus decommodified; on the other hand,
housing itself should be more realistically priced or rented with reference to construction costs.
Significantly, some level of re-commodification of housing has begun in some cities in the
People’s Republic of China and, housing analysts (Szelenyi, 1983; Tosics, 1987) of European
ex-socialist countries are calling and searching for a mixed state and market mechanism to
solve mounting housing problems. On the other hand, Singapore’s strategy is unlikely to be
considered by nations which are ideologically unreservedly committed to let the market provide
housing for the nation. For them, direct universal provision of public housing will always be
ideologically unthinkable but rationalised as financially too costly to build and maintain. They
will, therefore, leave significant portion of their population poor sheltered.
14
RESETTLEMENT
AND
COMMUNITY
IN
THE
HIGH-RISE
HOUSING
ENVIRONMENT
High-rise buildings were declared `unfit’ for family living by a U.S. National Commission on
Urban Problems (quoted in Weicher, 1982:63). In Britain, one critic summarily stated, `No
more flats should be built’ (Coleman, 1985:171). Such criticisms are legend among American
and British commentators. There is little need to rehearse the litany. However, it should be
noted that such negative sentiments are directed only at low income high-rise housing because
similar house-form has been very successful with the wealthy who choose to live in the city
centre, such as Fifth Avenue, New York or south side of Chicago, so as to avail themselves of
the facilities which the centre can offer. The difference should point us away from simplistic
architectural determinism and suggest that perhaps the problems in high-rise public housing are
not with the built form but with the financing, management and tenants. Instead, middle-class
professionals as critics, with noble intentions, aim to save the poor from themselves by taking
them out of high-rise buildings.
A further irony is that criticisms should come from the U.S. where public housing
accounts for a grand total of about one per cent of the national housing stock and from Britain,
where only thirteen per cent of the total public housing stock were actually `high-rise’ flats. In
both instances, housing has been overwhelmingly houses on the ground. The criticisms are
therefore mounted from an ideological assumption that single-family-house-on-the-ground with
a clearly delineated private patch that offers maximum sense of privacy and territorial controls
is the preferred form of housing for all. However, the U.S. and British practice is certainly not
the common feature everywhere. Indeed, even in Britain’s western European neighbours, living
in flats had been a common practice since the nineteenth century. As a comparative study of
state housing in Europe by Powers points out, `The British experience of mass housing was
quite distinct, with local authorities as direct providers on a huge scale, houses dominating over
flats’ (1993: 197). Against the prevailing British and American antagonism, 90% of the
Singapore population live in high-rise, high-density estates or new towns. It is the intention here
to delineate, from the experience of the relatively successfully resettled in Singapore, a
practicable concept of community in a comprehensively planned high-rise, high-density
environment.
15
BASIC CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESS IN HIGH-RISE ESTATES
The most fundamental necessary condition for success in high-rise living is the acceptance of
such living as a way of life, even if acceptance is the result of having no other option. This is so
in Singapore. Singaporeans across all class lines accept high-rise living, the range of buildings
span very exclusive multi-million dollar condominiums in the tourist belt to the smallest oneroom flat in public housing. Acceptance is crucial for the development of a general attitude of
tolerance of certain inconveniences in such a living arrangement, such as higher noise level,
lesser privacy; conditions that the British are apparently unwilling to tolerate (Powers,
1993:197). After an initial learning curve of living in high-rise blocks, life is characterised by
`avoidance of conflict, tolerance, accommodation, and respect with which residents deal with
specific cultural-religious difference’ (Lai, 1995:117). Whether this attitude was one of
rationalisation, naturalisation or actual appreciation of the values is in a sense inconsequential
in behavioural terms.
Acceptance is, of course, made easier in the absence of stigmatisation of both the estates
and their residents by the social and economic norms of non-high-rise residents. When only
families and individuals with multiple social disadvantages are placed in high-rise public
housing estates, as in the case of the U.S. and to a lesser extent Britain, stigmatisation is
unavoidable. On the other hand, it is reduced when high-rise living is the norm; this would itself
be both a cause and consequence of developing high-rise living as a way of life. It would be
further reduced if the residents owned their flats and were permitted to individualise the
standard flats through renovations of the interior, within the built-form’s structural limits. In
Singapore, extensive renovations have become the norm; spawning a growth in interior design
businesses and numbers of design professionals and related glossy magazines.
HOMOGENEITY OF SOCIAL LIFE IN SINGAPORE
The near universal provision of high-rise public housing has the effect of a homogenisation of
social life of Singaporeans: all public housing estates have an approximately similar level of
provision of ancillary facilities for daily needs. For example, most children in the estates go to
neighbourhood schools; shopping facilities are everywhere, particularly in the instances where
the town centre is also a `regional’ centre. More specifically, markets and hawker centres are
central in the configuration of residents’ daily life. The fresh produce markets operate only in
16
the morning, compelling all housewives to schedule into their morning routines a trip to the
market. During these trips, they develop some measures of familiarity with each other, breaking
down one layer of impersonality of the large housing estate. This is an effect of the
`socialisation’ of private activities through coordination of time.
Only a small proportion of the families owns a car, the bulk of the residents depending on
public transportation. A major benefit to public housing residents is the mass rapid transit rail
system; every housing new town is, or will be, served by the system that ferries residents to
employment and the city centre. The same transit system also helps to decentralise employment
and shopping facilities into the smaller `regional’ centres.
This homogenisation of lifestyle in public housing estates simultaneously brings into
relief existing inequalities which command residents’ attention. For example, private
apartments, houses-on-the-ground and cars are coveted objects and displayed as icons of
success against the sea of public housing residents using public transport. Every Singaporean
has to decide either to resign oneself to the position of never-to-possess such goods or to
compete aggressively for them. For middle income individuals, the choice will mean either
relative contentment with a comfortable material life in a 99-year leasehold, top-end public
housing flat or stressful adjustments to many aspects of social and material life just to possess
the desired status goods, for only about 10% of the working population earn enough income to
have both private housing, car and an annual vacation abroad (Leong, 1995; Foo, 1995).
However, these are inequalities of the economic system which housing policies cannot solve.
Near universal provision of public housing, nevertheless, has a dampening effect on the
visibility of the differences. The homogenisation of social life should help in community
development.
COMMUNITY IN THE HIGH-RISE ENVIRONMENT
Realising the difficulties for its emergence, planners and architects have always recognised the
need for community in high-rise residential housing estates. Invariably every plan of a cluster of
blocks of flats and every architectural rendering of a single block will provide designated
`community’ spaces. In a planned estate, there is usually a hierarchy of such designated spaces;
for example, in Singapore’s public housing new town, it begins with the ground floor which is
left void, known as `void decks’, precinct playgrounds, neighbourhood centres and a town
centre. Consequently, if community activity fails to emerge it is generally not for lack of
17
concern on the part of planners; albeit, unfortunately, provision of community spaces are
usually rationalised with economics and spatial considerations rather than from observations of
social behaviour which collectively make up and give rise to a `sense’ of community among the
residents. Substantively, a residential-based community is the result of routine social behaviour
of residents within a physical space which is phenomenological determined by the residents
themselves. In the attempt to find community in any built environment, one must therefore
conceptually begin with its users.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL FEATURES OF COMMUNITY
As resettlement is a common experience of Singaporeans in public housing, it is possible to
recover from the affected population a sense of the `community’ they have lost with the
destruction of the urban villages; no affected family is forcefully removed from an existing
house until a replacement flat is allocated for it. From a longitudinal study of one such village
before and after its resettlement into high-rise new towns, the following constitutive features of
community have been identified (Chua et al. , 1985).
First, in spite of the villagers’ general perception and claim that `everybody knew
everybody’, this `knowledge’ was not evenly distributed; the depth of knowledge depended
crucially on the degree to which an individual’s daily life was bound to the village. Second, for
those who were village-bound, routine social interaction between the villagers was brief, casual,
incidental, each villager following his or her own schedule of activities. These interactions
constitutes their behavioural building block for community. Third, for villagers’ whose social
networks were outside the village, a strong sense of community, expressed as a sense of
personal security, was derived from visual familiarity with the social and physical environment
of the village: the monotony of the social-scape caused by the high level of residential stability
and insularity of the village contrasted with the richness of the physical environment in which
every house and every lane had its own character.
General conceptual conclusions regarding community may be derived. First, community
is an unintentional product of daily life within a stable physical location. Second, since all
villagers shared a strong sense of security but differed in depth of social acquaintances,
familiarity with the stable social and physical landscape was arguably more fundamental than
active social interaction for the development of the sense of security. No doubt, the latter was a
reinforcing factor.
18
After the villagers were resettled, the following behavioural adjustments could be
identified. First, regardless of the size of the entire new town, as residents they were only
concerned with a limited physical area within which they must reproduce their daily lives with
a set of routine activities. Second, they were generally not adventurous when it came to routine
activities. As new residents to the housing estate they would explore various alternative paths
and places to meet their routine needs and necessities; once the most convenient routes and
places were worked out, they tended to stay with them. Third, in addition to physical space,
they were creatures of habits in the scheduling of the routines, in part determined by the
schedule of the institutions of works and services themselves. Every worker tended to go to
work not only along the same route but also at approximately the same time; similarly for
housewives with their marketing and escorting young children to and from kindergarten.
Finally, once resettled, not everyone desired to be part of the new residential-based community;
the less one was tied to local services, the less one desired a community.
TRANSLATING TO A HIGH-RISE ENVIRONMENT
Obviously, the idea of village community cannot be carried into the high-rise estates without
modification. To begin, given the geographical size and quantum of population - an HDB new
town has a population of between 150,000 to 300,000 - a generalised familiarity with the social
and physical environment, achievable in a village, is not possible in a new town. However,
residents are not concerned with the entire new town and a generalised social familiarity with
others in the same and adjoining blocks in the same neighbourhood is still possible. This
familiarity is, of course, built up over time and, therefore, is dependent on residential stability.
The rapid upgrading of households in HDB estates would continuously disrupt individual
resident’s sense of familiarity with others.
Familiarity with the physical environment of a new town is a more differentiated
phenomenon. Empirically, the level of familiarity achieved by a resident is dependent largely
on the primary mode of transportation used. For example, one who drives will be familiar with
the road network of a new town but may have no detailed knowledge of any part of it, except
perhaps the path between the apartment block and the car park. Conversely, one who walks
routinely to use the services and facilities within a new town will know intimately the physical
environment along the route, but may be quite lost once departing from it. Overall, whatever the
pattern, the development of a sense of familiarity is aided by the fact that the high-rise
19
environment is very stable, albeit rather monotonous. However, richness can be readily
introduced in different ways by various means.
The necessary conditions for the development of residential-based community may,
therefore, be said to be present in a high-rise environment. What need to be explored next are
the social processes that will activate these elements and together generate an organic
community among the residents. For this purpose, clearly much greater consideration should be
given to the pedestrian resident who is highly dependent on local services than the one who
drives in and out of the estate.
THE PROCESS OF COMMUNITY
Recall here that residents are creatures of habits in the execution of their routines and place
them within a potentially social space; despite architectural intentions, all allocated public
spaces remain only potential social spaces until activated by the residents themselves. The
following is an empirically recorded everyday scene in a `void’ deck of the neighbourhood
where the Chinese villagers were resettled.
Two women meet. One is a factory worker waiting to be picked up by pre-arranged
transport. The other is an elderly women who is resting after her daily morning exercise.
The factory worker is in an already familiar setting, built up of impressions of walking
through the same space day after day; of the same people, who like herself go to work
daily; of the same housewives going to or returning from the market; of the same elderly
lady she sees daily. Similarly and correspondingly, the same scene is familiar to the
elderly woman. The two very simply greet each other in the most obvious phrasing: The
younger woman says, not amounting to a question because it is obvious, `So early, ah!’,
the elderly lady responded with `Going to work?’.
Once this level of familiarity between two residents was established, only a simple greeting was
needed to transform familiarity into social acquaintance. In this process, the first greeting holds
some special significance. It discloses a number of assumed elements embedded in the
situation:
1. That the coincidence of their separate routines which brings them at approximately
the same time to the same place in the morning is a recurring event;
2. That the recurrence of what could have been a chance meeting points to their being
from the `same’ neighbourhood;
3. That they acknowledged (1) and (2) above by their initiatives to address each other.
Subsequent greetings thus seal and renew the recognition and acknowledgement that they are
from the same neighbourhood.
20
The progression of the processes from visual familiarity to social acquaintance are
established, multiplied and replicated among different stable groups of residents throughout the
entire new town, especially at peaks of activities, like the morning and evening rushes;
precisely because the residents’ routines are predictable and regular, they will see the same
faces at approximately the same time, everyday. Collectively they constitute the abstract
community in the new town.
CORRIDORS OF ACTIVITIES
Community in the high-rise environment emerges and operates as a variable from the point of
view of the individual resident, and varies according to the people one routinely encounters in
the everyday life in the new town. In this sense, it is similar in process as that of the village.
However, unlike the village, this sense of community cannot be generalised to cover the entire
new town. Therefore, the concept of community must be modified to reflect the more restrictive
sense in which it operates: the particular paths along which the routines of the residents are
carried out can be conceptualised as `corridors of activities’. Each corridor would contain its
own community of resident-users. Along each corridor, a high degree of social and physical
familiarities can be achieved and maintained, as the resident-users continuously reaffirm and
revitalise their acquaintances in their incidental, casual face-to-face encounters.
At a more abstract level, the corridors are not completely individualised and separate
ribbons of physical spaces. Rather, in a neighbourhood, they overlap and share common focal
points resulting in overlapping activities and memberships and thus expanding the horizon of
the sense of community beyond any particular corridor. An obvious example is the evenings at
the void deck of an HDB new town. It serves as a waiting point for parents of returning
students, a playground for young children and their care takers, a gathering point for retirees, a
brief resting point for someone returning from elsewhere, a venue for badminton, Chinese
chess, table-tennis and a teenage hangout. In their simultaneous presence, these activities and
their participants constitute an `open’ community characterised by multiple uses of the same
space and thus provide more opportunities for repeat encounters and varying levels of face-toface interactions between residents. That there is a community sense is reinforced by the
informal processes of negotiation between different groups in taking turns to use the same
spaces (Lai 1995). Such is the spontaneous and organic community which develops out of the
necessary reproduction of everyday life of and by the residents themselves.
21
SUPPORTING ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES
From the above conceptualisation, the emergence of community in a high-rise environment is
dependent on a very high level of pedestrian use of outdoor spaces. The HDB new town is laid
out to facilitate such uses, no block of flats is more than 400 metres walking distance to a
neighbourhood centre where all the daily necessities can be obtained. All other facilities are
within walking distance except the town centre which is a short intra-estate bus ride.
The residential blocks themselves are designed with an eye on increasing informal
surveillance and community security in high-rise estates. Oscar Newman (1972) has pointed out
that external corridors reduce incidents of crime; that the number of dwelling units per entry
way should be small enough for residents who are sharing the same entrance to know each
other, thereby reducing anonymity and increasing surveillance, accordingly large slab-blocks
should have internal horizontal and vertical partitions to divide them into small segments
(Coleman 1985:14). All these design features are in fact built into HDB public housing blocks.
Due in part to tropical climatic conditions, all blocks have external corridors where activities
are readily visible to passers-by; the only exception is the now disappearing, lowest cost oneroom flat rental blocks which have double-loaded corridors. The slab-block itself is horizontally
divided into segments of six to eight dwelling units per storey with all the doors facing into the
short corridor and stair-landing, keeping all these public spaces within the visual attention of the
residents. Residents further territorialise these spaces with plants.
The above features contrast with high-rise public housing estates in Britain and the U.S.
where, determined partly by the temperate climate, with cool to cold temperature and short
daylight hours during autumn and winter months, public housing blocks generally have internal
corridors. Screened from sight, these corridors become possible sites of crime and mischief.
During the same months there is a tendency towards absence of pedestrian activities and its
concomitant high dependency on automobiles; two factors which contribute significantly to the
failures of high-rise public housing estates (Coleman 1985:9).
As to open public spaces, all such spaces in high-rise housing estates are of dubious
ownership. In the British and American cases, such spaces are most prone to vandalism,
littering and crime because no one bothers with what is happening in these spaces as
jurisdiction, responsibility and policing over them are unclear (Coleman 1985: 45-46).
Administratively, it must be accepted that public spaces are high maintenance spaces to be
delegated to specific authority. While graffiti and vandalism do occur in the public spaces in
22
HDB estates, the level is low and the immediate attention they receive helps to keep them
down; for the cardinal rule in public housing is `maintenance deferred is an open invitation to
vandalism’ (Meehan, 1979:28).
CONCLUSION
Obviously, negative experiences with high-rise public housing in any particular country should
not be universalised. The most significant cause for failure in the U.S. is that the estates
concentrate multiple disadvantaged individuals and households who are unable to maintain
themselves and their living environment. Besides, why should they contribute to the
maintenance of the symbol of their stigmatisation as social failures (Cole and Furbey,
1994:112). Stigmatisation can be eliminated with universal provision of high-rise flats.
Moreover, it can be reversed if residents were free to individualise the standard flats into
`homes’ and derive pride from the abode.
Without intending to be deterministic, it has to be accepted that climate plays a role in the
success of high-rise housing. In contrast to the cold temperate climate, high-rise living has some
advantages in the tropics; it is cooler, cleaner and free of insects and residents greatly
appreciate. A tropical climate also encourages the use of public spaces as a way of escaping the
confinement of the buildings and heat, which indirectly increases informal surveillance of the
residential environment as a whole. The high level of pedestrian activity is essential to generate
community sentiments in high-rise estates.
For a practicable concept of community in a high-rise environment, an architect/planner’s
task should begin with prefiguring what common activities exist among different identifiable
groups of residents/users. Subsequently, related activities can be designed and placed within
`corridors of activities’. This will facilitate the development of a sense of community among the
users/members of the identifiable groups. Overlapping of these corridors will provide visibility
of the groups to each other and help to integrate the individualised corridors of users into a
more abstract level of a generalised community in the estate. It should be accepted, however,
that the latter process will likely be less than what may be achievable with smaller estates that
have houses on the ground.
Singapore’s public housing program, from financing to the everyday life of its residents,
shows that the pervasive negative sentiments in developed nations against high-rise public
housing are localised respective experiences. Such housing programs can and do succeed.
23
While the formula for success may be singularised rather than general, the Singapore case
surely justifies closer examination for some lessons.
ENDNOTES
1. Since 1991, each public housing estate is managed by a committee headed by the elected MP and his
appointees. Such committees have been given the rather grandiose name of `town councils' (cf., Ooi,
1990).
2. There is in principle or in practice no reason why the income ceiling should not be removed
completely. Doing so would only add a very small fraction of the demands of flats which the HDB
can easily meet. The possible reasons for not doing so are (i) to protect the private housing market
where very substantial amounts of capital have been invested by Singaporeans themselves, and (ii) to
keep private housing as a socially differentiated housing class so that it may act as the `prize' for those
who have broke through the financial norm of the nation.
3. To the extent that the mortgage for all sales flats are fixed at the same below-market rate, the larger the
mortgage the greater is the savings; in this sense, there exists an inequality.
4. The nominal number of rooms includes sitting-dining room and bedrooms. Kitchen and washrooms
are excluded from the count.
5. The poor living conditions of the first generation of `emergency' one and two room flats had been
documented by Hassan (1973).
24
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