Navigating Between Limits: The Future of Public Housing in Singapore

Abstract

The People's Action Party government of Singapore, which has been in power without discontinuity since 1959, is committed to a national housing program with universal provision of 99-year leasehold homeownership for all its citizens. Since 1961 to 2013, the Housing and Development Board, the public housing authority, has built more than one million high-rise housing units, accommodating approximately 90 per cent of the citizens and permanent residents, of which more than 85 per cent of the resident households are homeowners. This close to universal provision system has generated a set of perennial competing demands. Among them are (i) in view of the absence of a national pension scheme, the need to enable homeowners to monetize their public housing property to finance the retirement years, (ii) in order to facilitate retirement funding, public housing flats must be allowed to increase in asset values, to keep up with inflation and rising costs of living and (iii) new subsidized flats must be kept affordable for new entrants into the housing market. The management of these competing demands requires constant monitoring and intervention by the state in order to maintain a balance and sustainable system.