“The government and its housing agency are thus constantly, indeed permanently, engaged in acts of balancing competing demands.” This is the situation that the Housing & Development Board, which builds public, owner-occupied housing for the vast majority of Singapore’s citizens and permanent residents, has created for itself. And they’ve been phenomenally successful at maintaining that balance: 85% of Singaporeans own a public housing unit — on a 99-year lease, not permanently — and prices for new homes have stayed relatively affordable for decades. What did it take to get there, where has Singapore’s leadership fallen short along the way, and what lessons can be exported to other nations? Professor Chua Beng Huat of the National University of Singapore and Yale-NUS College gives us a detailed history of the small island nation’s public housing program, and explains how a responsive government and a program of constant policy “patches” keeps it all running.

Show notes:

• Chua, B. H. (2014). Navigating between limits: the future of public housing in Singapore. Housing Studies, 29(4), 520-533.
• Wikipedia entry on Punggol, Singapore.
• Read more about the Housing & Development Board.
• Sin, C. H. (2002). The quest for a balanced ethnic mix: Singapore's ethnic quota policy examined. Urban Studies, 39(8), 1347-1374.
• Paavo’s interview with Yip Ngai-Ming on Hong Kong’s public housing.