Affordability Questioned

When the mainstream media puts out a full page article with the heading "Building affordable homes for S'poreans" you know that even the spin masters are tired of spouting out the same old lies. Hiding the truth just got difficult.

There was this 1992 quote attributed to Goh Chok Tong:
"It is in your interest to ensure that the value of your flats continues to rise."
And this one from Khaw Boon Wan:
"If Singapore's economy were to decline permanently, all properties would drop in value."
The most recent quote about chasing up the prices came from Lee Hsien Loong:
"The HDB programme is not just about the roof over our heads. It is also a valuable nest egg."
Quite obviously, the tiresome triumvirate shares same agenda, keep racking up those numbers.

The whole affordability problem started when the Housing and Development Board (HDB) deviated from it's original 1969 charter of providing basic housing for the masses. In 1971 public flats could be put on the resale market, instead of being sold back to the HDB at fixed prices after the 99 year lease was up. Conveniently excluded from the telling of the deviant history is the part when the cost of land is imputed into the price tag of the flat. There's a quote somewhere with Dhanabalan saying that land set aside for public housing would make more money if allocated to private developers. Henceforth the opportunity cost of land was foisted on the peasants. The article did record that in 1988, Dhanabalan said land-scarce Singapore could not afford to let every single person have a flat of his own". But it's okay for billionaire singles from overseas to buy up a whole penthouse or bungalow. Just for that, he deserves to be slapped on the left, and then the right cheek.

Members of the pioneer generation recall 3-room flats could be had for $7,000 in the good old days. So the $10,000 for a new flat in Sembawang is not the result of a typo. Perhaps it's the subsidy that is padding the inflated prices. Which begs the question, does HDB pump up the sales revenue with the inflated numbers, or nett off the subsidies and report only the "discounted prices"? We would like to think the HDB had a good system in the past, and should revert to the original guiding light of Lim Kim San.

Lee Hsien Loong told Sir Malcolm Rifkind at think-tank Chatham House that it is not the system that will continue keeping (Singapore) clean, it is the people who run it who will do so. Problem here is that we already have people who keep running the system to the ground.