THE Housing Board is unlikely to stop building flats even if its experiment to allow private developers to design, build, price and sell homes takes off.
It has to continue to provide a yardstick of quality and give buyers an alternative to private developers, said National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan yesterday.
He told reporters that 'the role of HDB in the last 40 over years has been to provide good quality public housing to Singaporeans. I think that role will always remain...but how HDB delivers on that can change over time'.
This could mean involving the private sector. Private developer Sim Lian Land recently won a tender for a site in Tampines where it will design, build, and sell flats to the public under a pilot scheme.
Although Sim Lian has the freedom to decide the type of flats it wants to build and how to price them, it has to follow certain HDB rules, like having an ethnic quota. The Government, on its part, will give buyers grants to buy those flats to ensure they are affordable.
Asked by reporters whether the HDB will ever stop building flats should this scheme take off, Mr Mah said: 'I don't think that point will be reached for a long, long time, if ever. There will always be scope for us. We should always offer this choice.
'The private-sector developers have got their own different ways of doing things. We also need to make sure that, in terms of the practical issues of maintainability, the quality of the flats and so on, we always have an alternative. The quality of HDB flats is known.
'And the HDB has many years of experience in terms of what kind of flats people like to live in, what features of the flats are popular and so on, so I think that experience is still useful for the HDB to keep.'
Mr Mah was speaking after a lecture delivered on the second anniversary of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
He earlier told the audience of mostly graduate students and academics that Singapore's housing policy hinged on promoting home ownership so people feel rooted to the country.
By including different types of flats in the same precincts, as well as enforcing ethnic quotas, the HDB also helps to ensure social stability by helping people of different races and financial circumstances to mix.
The Government now spends close to 3 per cent of its annual budget - about $900 million in the financial year ending March 2007 - on public housing. Mr Mah told reporters he did not foresee the need for that level of funding to drop in the future.
'But if we need the money, and we can't get it from the Budget, then we would have to look for other sources of financing,' he said.
Looking ahead, Mr Mah said the Government was now trying to cater to the ageing population by making homes more elder-friendly and allowing them to sub-let their flats for extra income.
It is trying to bridge the growing income divide by giving extra housing grants to the poorest, as well as meet the rising aspirations of the more affluent Singaporeans. At the same time, it is constantly rejuvenating older estates by upgrading them.
Asked by a reporter whether the practice of giving People's Action Party-held wards priority during upgrading was sustainable, Mr Mah said: 'Yes, I think that's quite defensible. It's something that any government would do. If you have limited resources, you have limited time to do certain things, and you give certain priority to certain wards. That is not unusual.
'But when it comes to government programmes like lift upgrading, it will be accessible to all, both opposition as well as PAP wards.'
tanhy@sph.com.sg
