‘Many lessons to learn’: Malaysian minister points to Singapore’s HDB model

SINGAPORE: Malaysia’s Minister of Housing and Local Government Nga Kor Ming said he hopes Singapore will share its experience with public housing for the purpose of improving its own. 

“Singapore is well known for its public housing system, specifically the HDB model, as well as its Urban Redevelopment Authority,” said Mr Nga in a Facebook post on June 15.

The Malaysian minister was in Singapore recently, where he held a bilateral meeting with Minister for National Development Chee Hong Tat to review progress in the region as well as discuss how sustainable urbanisation may be furthered.

They reviewed ongoing projects between Singapore and Malaysia, as well as looked into new channels for collaboration concerning sustainable housing and modern construction technologies.

Mr Nga suggested during the course of the discussions that cooperation may be strengthened via talent mobility and knowledge-sharing initiatives, and pointed out that Malaysia has many important insights to gain from Singapore’s success when it comes to public housing projects.

Mr Nga was also in the city-state for the World Cities Summit. At the sidelines of the summit, he sat down with Singapore’s Manpower Minister Tan See Leng for a brief tea session. According to Dr Tan, they discussed potential collaborations between the two countries, adding, “We are close neighbours, and there is so much more we can achieve together!”

Singapore’s public housing

The city-state’s public housing programme under the Housing and Development Board has been admired by other countries aside from Malaysia, including Australia.

With over 80 per cent of Singaporeans living in HDB flats, public housing is part of Singapore’s success story. 

The HDB’s thrust has always been affordability and accessibility, though concerns have been raised over higher prices, especially for resale flats, in recent years. 

In 2019, then Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong said, “HDB was set up nearly six decades ago in 1960, and we’ve built over one million flats across 26 towns and estates…. We can also look around the world to compare, and really, there is no other city which has an institution like HDB. 

Many will come to us to learn, but no one has been able to replicate the HDB. There is no other society which has a housing programme where young couples are able to get a new flat with zero out-of-pocket cash payments when they just start working. It’s only here in Singapore where we have painstakingly built up this institution, and today, it is a tremendous success. Without the HDB, Singapore would have been a very different country.” /TISG 

Read also: Jamus Lim Explores Singapore’s Public Housing History and Current Challenges