One prominent feature of our family’s recent revenge travel episode to Singapore was staying at the HDB where my sister-in-law lives. So, aside from our experience with first-world public transportation which discussed in my previous column, todays topic will be quality public housing.
According to its website, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) is Singapore’s public housing authority, planning and developing its housing estates. Established in 1960 during the country’s housing crisis, the HDB was tasked with providing sanitary living conditions to replace the prevalent unhygienic slums and crowded squatter settlements.
HDBs have gone on to house an entire nation. Today, more than 1 million flats have been completed in 23 towns and 3 estates across the island. 80% of Singapore’s resident population live in HDBs, of which 90% own their home.
Public housing for Singaporeans means that the government constructs the buildings and homes and then provides the schemes and grants to make home ownership affordable and attractive. With more or less 80% of the population of a first world country living in HDBs, it would be probably be fair to call their program a success.
My wife’s sister stays in a HDB unit in the Bedok area. That’s about 12 kilometers from the city center (City Hall MRT station) but close to where she works. She doesn’t own the unit but has an arrangement similar to renting it. That is where the 4 of us stayed when we visited her.
The HDB we stayed in was around 16 floors high. The first floor is a common area, it shared a playground, courtyard, and exercise area with adjacent buildings. Close by were other parks and recreational facilities. From what we observed in our daily walks to the MRT, there was a preschool/daycare within our building and probably in other adjacent buildings, because many little kids in uniform were using the outdoor facilities for their school activities.
Mostly covered walkways provided access to the bus and MRT stations nearby. There was a parking area too, but since not a lot of Singaporeans own cars because of their awesomely efficient public transportation system, it wasn’t that full and we never really noticed it.
As for the accommodations itself, it was everything you would expect from quality public housing. The building and its common areas were well-maintained, clean and safe. There were no security guards, reception desks, or key cards for access but security didn’t seem to be an issue for everyone. Aside from feeling generally safe, there was also the general vibe that fellow occupants were disciplined and that there was mutual respect for each other’s private spaces.
We didn’t stay there a lot, because we were out most of the day and often came home after dinner time already, but my family and I really didn’t mind staying in an HDB during our stay there. We felt safe, and while it obviously wasn’t from a Crazy Rich Asians set, we didn’t feel like we were 2nd or 3rd class citizens…just normal people. The neighbors were neither annoying nor inconsiderate and it felt like there wasn’t a lot of conflict among them because they all followed the rules. That is probably what happens when citizens know how expensive bad behavior can be in the “finest” city in the world. Nobody was trying to one-up or “utak” each other.
Having stayed in few different iterations of it in the few times we visited my wife’s only sister, you can feel that Singaporeans are proud of their HDB, convinced by their experience that it is one of the best public housing programs in the world.
As much as it would be nice to copy their HDB system, the few days that we stayed in one showed me that it wasn’t easy. If you come to think of it, the easiest part in coming up with a HDB-like housing program is ensuring the quality of the build and keeping it free from corruption. The second-easiest part is providing financing programs that can make ownership affordable.
Because even if a government can construct the buildings and make the loans accessible to its people, building the actual communities within those buildings so that everyone feels equally safe, comfortable, in harmony with their neighbors and their interests protected by a system of rules that ensures fairness and impartiality will be the toughest part.
The way Filipinos are wired right now, I don’t see our government and our people having the ability to build such a community yet. We obviously still have a lot to work on if we want a Filipino equivalent of the HDB. If we can choose only one, maybe the public transportation upgrade might be a more doable challenge.
Or am I underestimating the collective ability of the government and private sector to build livable communities?*
