标题: Housing in Singapore [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 7-13-2017 15:30 标题: Housing in Singapore Housing in Singapore l The High Life. The city-state's public housing system works well. But does it have to be so bossy? Economist, July 6, 2017 https://www.economist.com/news/a ... 0-singaporeans-live
Note:
(a) Eugene is "a hologram, trapped behind glass at a self-aggrandising [American spelling: aggrandising] museum in the bowels of Singapore's Housing & Development Board (HDB) 建屋发展局. * * * few [countries] are quite as devoted to them as Singapore, where four-fifths of the permanent population live in subsidised units built by the government, most of them as owner-occupiers. The city-state’s suburbs bristle with HDB towers, painted calming pastel hues."
Donald Lim (CEO, DigiMagic), Check out These Insane Hologram Presentations from Singapore. Singapore Business Review, Mar 23, 2012.
sbr.com.sg/media-marketing/commentary/check-out-these-insane-hologram-presentations-singapore
One photo is topped with the caption: "HDB Hologram (Click image for video)" -- but the link to Youtube.com was disconnected.
(b) "HDB was formed in 1960 [Malaysia expelled Singapore in 1965], replacing a city-planning agency created by British colonialists. The agency intended at first to build rental housing for poor families, but within four years it had switched to building apartments for sale to the masses. * * * The government used its powers to acquire much of the land that was not then under its control (it now owns around 90% of Singapore’s territory), and gradually moved Singaporeans from low-slung villages into concrete high-rises. Today there are about 1m HDB apartments, largely clustered in two dozen new towns that extend in a semicircle around the city's coastal core. Each year the government sells a fresh batch of as-yet-unbuilt flats, predominantly to first-time buyers. They all come with 99-year leases and are sold at lower-than-market prices, though successful applicants must wait three or four years for their blocks to be completed. Alternatively Singaporeans can choose to buy existing HDB apartments directly from their owners, at whatever price buyer and seller can agree. * * * New three-bedroom flats that were offered this year in Punggol, an outlying suburb that has been home to much of HDB’s recent development, cost a little over S$300,000 ($217,000 [today's foreign exchange rate: S$1.37 = $1]) on average. * * * Buying a comparable HDB flat on the secondary market would have cost about a fifth to a quarter more. Buying an apartment built by private developers—whose projects cater primarily to the richest Singaporeans and to foreigners—can easily cost three times as much. The cash Singaporeans use to buy HDB's properties is provided in part by the Central Provident Fund (CPF), a mandatory national-savings scheme into which most citizens of working age are required to squirrel 20% of their monthly salary (employers must contribute a further 17%)."
(i) "They all come with 99-year leases"
You guess right. Economist's use of "ownership" is a misnomer. The truth in Singapore is more akin to that in China. See
Lease Will Run out for Majority of HDB Flats Without SERS, Minister Wong Confirms. The Independent, Mar 25, 2017. www.theindependent.sg/lease-will ... ster-wong-confirms/
(A) Ministry of National Development 国家发展部
(B) Lawrence Wong Shyun Tsai 黄循财 (Wong is Cantonese pronunciation.)
(C) Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se ... edevelopment_Scheme
No Chinese.
(D) Gerald Giam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Giam
(Gerald GIAM Yean Song 严燕松; 1977- ; from the Workers' Party 工人党 who is currently a Non-constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) of the 13th Parliament of Singapore
(E) Non-constituency Member of Parliament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No ... ember_of_Parliament(
("is declared to have been elected a Member of the Parliament of Singapore * * * by virtue of having been one of the best-performing losers;" since 1984)
(F) Khaw Boon Wan 许文远 (The Taiwanese or Minnan 闽南语pronunciation for 许 sounds the same as English noun "core.")
(ii) Punggol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punggol
(Chinese: 榜鹅; section 1 Etymology: Malay)
(iii) Central Provident Fund 公积金 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Provident_Fund 作者: choi 时间: 7-13-2017 15:31 本帖最后由 choi 于 9-15-2018 10:26 编辑
(c) "By many measures the system is a success. * * * It is also a good deal for the state. In 2015-16 the treasury put aside S$1.8bn, or 2.4% of the national budget, for housing, which was enough to cover HDB’s annual deficit. (The agency itself had a budget of S$17bn * * * The government says it has paid a little over S$28bn in grants to HDB since its founding in the 1960s. Handouts [ie, freebies] linked to housing are one reason Singapore manages to do without a conventional tax-funded pension scheme. The theory is that almost all Singaporeans will own apartments outright by the time they finish working, in addition to having savings of their own. Those willing to downsize upon retirement—or 'right-size [no Chinese words],' as the government likes to say—do best. Singaporeans are granted an extra discount if they choose to buy property located in the same neighbourhood as their parents, nudging them to help with care that could otherwise fall to the state."
(d) "extremely high rates of home-ownership have helped make Singapore's electorate unusually risk-averse. In election campaigns, PAP [People's Action Party] candidates have often noted that HDB buildings in constituencies that vote for the opposition go to the back of the line for government-funded upgrades. Moreover, the government uses its control of the housing system to help shape how Singaporeans live. * * * Most sweeping is the priority granted to married couples, justified in recent years by Singapore's eagerness to raise its low birth rate. Loners can apply for flats of their own, but only if they are still unwed by the age of 35. [The same for gay couples (both are Singaporean citizens and older than 35 under Joint Singles Scheme (JSS), though same-sex marriage is not permitted) and mothers of young children born out of wedlock (as well as divorced or widowed parents with children; neither has age requirement plus citizenship).]
Ochiai Emiko and Hosoya Leo Aoi (eds), Transformation of the Intimate and the Public in Asian Modernity. Kyoto University Press, 2013, at page 74 https://books.google.com/books?i ... 201990s&f=false
("births out of wedlock are still extremely rare in East Asia. The ratio of births out of wedlock in 2005 was 2.0% in Japan, 1.5% in South Korea, 4.0% in Taiwan. and 1.3% in Singapore (Suzuki 2009). In Europe, births out of wedlock count for more than half of all births in Northwestern Europe, and it rapidly increased even in Southern Europe (20.7% for Italy, 28.4% for Spain and 31.6% for Portugal), a great contrast with East Asia (Suzuki 2009). Instead, what we find is an increasing number of so called 'shotgun marriages,' or to be more faithful to the Japanese expression, 'oops marriages' ")
(e) "Provisions for the poorest look meagre compared with social-housing programmes in America or Britain. Subsidised rental apartments are generally only available to those with household incomes below S$1,500 a month who are unable to bunk up with relatives. They consist only of studios and one-bedroom flats * * * (HDB says that people earning only slightly more than that should be able to afford to buy [perhaps 'buy' in Singapore means, say, a 99-year, long-term lease, whereas 'rental' means an annual contract] a home through the usual schemes.)"
bunk up (vi): "to share a bed or sleeping accommodations, especially temporarily" http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/bunk+up
(f) "older Singaporeans have turned out to be keener than expected to hang on to their homes, rather than release capital by moving in with their children or 'right-sizing' to smaller flats. * * * HDB-owners are still coming to terms with the idea that their properties could be worth nothing when their 99-year leases expire. (Whether and how leases will be renewed is a growing concern for all sorts of HDB-buyers, given that some blocks are more than 40 years old.) * * * a system fixated on home ownership and dismissive of renting" 作者: singapore 时间: 9-13-2018 20:29
The advantage of HDB is the price is very low, everyone can afford it with a ordinary job.