Chua Beng Huat. Public Subsidy / Private Accumulation: The Political Economy of Singapore’s Public Housing. Singapore: NUS Press, 2024.
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: More than eighty percent of Singapore's residents live in public housing flats owned by the country's public housing authority, the Housing and Development Board (HDB).This high percentage is due to the limited housing options available, which are: 1) to purchase a 99-year lease for a HDB flat to live there; 2) to meet very strict conditions to live in one of a limited number of public rental flats (i.e., do not purchase a lease); or 3) to purchase a more expensive private condominium or a much more expensive landed house.In Singapore, most people can afford to purchase the 99-year lease on the relatively cheap HDB flats and are entitled to most of the rights of ownership.This system distinguishes Singapore from most other countries, where government withdraws from public housing provision as much as possible.Given this distinction, and its overwhelming usage by the citizenry, the public housing program holds special importance and meanings.It therefore provides rich ground for research.The Singaporean sociologist Chua Beng Huat draws on more than forty years of such research to situate the program in its historical context from the colonial era to the latest trends in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.The book compares the program to global counterparts and discusses it as "a property-owning procedural democracy."Wherever one turns in Singapore, there are success stories of the HDB flats, and these stories are always connected with the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) government.The prevailing narrative is one of people being able to live in very nice, clean, and beautiful flats, which they own.Like most Singapore citizens who must live in the HDB flats, most academics who study Singapore's public housing system must also reiterate this narrative (e.g., Nabekura 2011).This book can be said to belong to the exception, which, in the Singapore context, need less to say, is extremely valuable.The author keeps his distance from the customary stories, analyzes the mechanism which has made it possible for so many residents to "buy" their flats, and reveals the fundamental contradictions of the public housing program.
Source: Southeast Asian Studies
Author: Satoshi Nabekura
Institution: Shiga University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7133564950
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