SINGAPORE: Dr Paul Tambyah, Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) chair, says his party’s public housing plan “will ensure that all Singaporeans have a roof over our heads while at the same time preserving value for those who have invested their life savings on public housing stock”.
In the recent Speak up for Singapore Forum Series, Dr Tambyah discussed public housing with Progress Singapore Party’s Wendy Low and SDP Cadre Azhar Sulaiman.
Accessible and affordable housing has been a hot-button issue lately, due to a shortage of housing units and skyrocketing property prices after the Covid-19 pandemic began.
It was discussed in Parliament earlier this year.
Dr Tambyah said there are individuals who treat public housing as an investment, and that was part of the problem.
Using his own payslip as a young doctor from many years ago as an example, he said that while salaries may have gone up by two or two-and-a-half times over the past few decades, the price of resale housing has gone up as much as five times, and BTO and RFS flat prices have generally followed the trend of resale flats.
In other words, housing has become more expensive for medical officers today than it was for him 30 years ago. That is true for people in other professions too, he added.
Dr Tambyah went on to talk about SDP’s policy.
“Public housing is ensuring that individuals have clean, safe housing to live in that allows them to get on with the rest of their lives,” he said.
The SDP says there should be two categories of houses. One is the non-open market housing type, in which a buyer can only sell back to the HDB.
This was how it was in earlier days, when there was no resale market.
However, reverting to this system would cause a market crash.
Therefore, the SDP says there should also be open-market flats that can freely be sold on the market. But if the seller wants to buy a new flat, he should do so in the non-open market system, or he should pay a premium on land costs.
The SDP explains its policies on housing more fully here.
The full video of the forum, including input from Ms Low and Mr Sulaiman, may be found here.
/TISG