Housing and Amenities

An endearing home for all

We maintained a quality living environment for Singaporeans:

• Singapore has consistently maintained high liveability standards and retained its ranking in the top quartile among 173 cities in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index 2023.

• From Financial Years 2020 to 2022, our public housing developments achieved a high Construction Quality Assessment System (CONQUAS) score of 95 out of 100, indicating a high level of construction quality comparable to those of private residential developments. Over 90% of defects reported within the liability period were successfully rectified within 14 working days.

• To transform Singapore into a City in Nature, we are building upon our greening and conservation efforts.

Read more: Environment and Sustainability

Fulfilling home ownership aspirations

We remain committed to supporting home ownership. In 2023, around 80% of resident households live in HDB flats, more than 90% of whom are homeowners.

Meeting housing demand

The COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented supply chain disruptions and labour shortages, resulting in construction delays. Meanwhile, housing demand remained strong.

To address this, the Government worked closely with the construction sector to address the challenges faced. This included supplying our contractors with concreting materials at controlled prices amid global price spikes.

• As at September 2024, about 94% of delayed flats have been completed. The remaining delayed projects are on track for completion by early 2025.

• We committed to launching 100,000 new flats between 2021 and 2025. As at October 2024, we have launched over 82,000 new flats.

The application rates of Build-To-Order (BTO) flats have since decreased to lower than pre-COVID-19 levels, supporting home ownership aspirations.

Shorter wait times

With the recovery of the construction sector, the median wait time for BTO flats improved from about five years in 2022, to three years and 10 months in 2023. To further reduce wait time, we increased the proportion of Shorter Waiting Time (SWT) flats in our new flat supply without compromising quality. This was achieved by bringing forward the construction of sites which were ready for development, where possible. We launched 2,800 SWT flats in 2024 (approximately 14% of flat supply in 2024), a year ahead of our targeted timeline.

Families requiring subsidised temporary housing while awaiting flat completion were supported by the Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme (PPHS). In July 2024, we introduced a one-year PPHS (Open Market) Voucher, where eligible families renting HDB flats or bedrooms in the open market can apply for a rental voucher of $300 per month to defray the cost of their rental. We will continue to support PPHS-eligible families by doubling the supply of PPHS flats to 4,000 units by 2025.

Ensuring home affordability and accessibility

As part of Forward Singapore, Singaporeans shared their hope for public housing to remain affordable and accessible.

• To ensure affordability, four rounds of cooling measures (for example, the lowering of the Loan-to-Value limit for HDB loans) were implemented in December 2021, September 2022, April 2023, and August 2024 to stabilise the housing market.

• With the increase in the Enhanced CPF Housing Grant from August 2024, first-timer families can receive housing grants of up to $120,000 for BTO flats and up to $230,000 for resale flats. In 2023, over eight in 10 first-timers who bought their flats with HDB loans spent less than a quarter of their monthly income servicing their mortgage payments using their CPF contributions, with little to no cash outlay.

• The new framework of “Standard, Plus, Prime” flats provides additional subsidies for choicer locations, with tighter restrictions such as subsidy recovery and conditions on resale and rental to ensure fairness and mitigate excessive windfall gain. This helps maintain the affordability and accessibility of flats in more attractive locations.

We provided targeted support for Singaporeans with greater needs.

• For young families, the First-Timer (Parents & Married Couples) (FT(PMC)) priority category was introduced in the October 2023 BTO exercise to help them secure their first homes more quickly. Across our BTO launches up to February 2024, about nine in 10 FT(PMC) applicants, on average, were issued a queue number within the flat supply. This meant that the applicants stood a high chance of securing a flat.

• Today, married children and their parents buying new flats to live with or close to one another get priority access to BTO flats, to make it easier for families to look after one another. From mid-2025, we will extend this priority access to all parents and their children, married or single.

• Low-income citizen households can tap on highly subsidised public rental housing. Over the years, we have expanded rental housing options for low-income singles such as the Joint Singles Scheme Operator-Run model and the Single Room Shared Facilities. These offered an improved living experience such as through facilitating greater privacy, and support from an on-site operator on tenancy matters. As at September 2024, about 1,200 singles have benefitted from these models.

Shaping our future city

The Government carefully plans and stewards Singapore’s limited land, to provide a quality living environment that meets the needs and aspirations of current and future generations of Singaporeans. We do this through the:

• Long-Term Plan, which is reviewed every 10 years and guides the development of Singapore over the next 50 years and beyond.

• Master Plan, which translates the broad strategies under the Long-Term Plan into detailed plans and is reviewed every five years.

The latest Draft Master Plan review is expected to be completed by end-2025.

Rejuvenation of our housing estates

We enhanced the liveability and vibrancy of our existing public housing estates through upgrading at various levels. These included the Home Improvement Programme (HIP) to address common maintenance issues within ageing flats, the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme (NRP) to refresh precinct amenities, and the Remaking Our Heartland (ROH) programme for comprehensive town-wide rejuvenation.

• As at September 2024, about 70% of flats built before 1998 have undergone the HIP, and all eligible blocks built before 1996 have been selected for the NRP. We will extend the NRP to blocks built up to 1999.

• Nine towns and estates have undergone transformation under ROH. In 2023, following extensive engagement with residents, we shared plans to rejuvenate four more towns: Ang Mo Kio, Bukit Merah, Choa Chua Kang, and Queenstown.

Feature Story: Residents can look forward to rejuvenated public spaces under ROH

From March 2020 to July 2022, over 1,000 survey respondents and 700 focus group participants shared their ideas and aspirations for their towns.

At the Queenstown engagement, residents shared their wish for more greenery and spaces for community gardening around their homes. To enhance the well-being of residents through interaction with nature, we will progressively implement wellness landscapes with therapeutic gardens by 2029, as part of the Queenstown ROH.

Building new hawker centres to serve residents’ needs

Between 2011 and 2015, the Government announced plans to build 20 new hawker centres, especially in new housing estates that face a relative under-provision of eating options. This will help ensure that residents have access to affordable food options. As at October 2024, 14 new centres have been completed and are in operation, and the locations of the six other new centres have been announced.

Enhancing public cleanliness

Singapore is known as a “Clean and Green City”, with initiatives such as the “Keep Singapore Clean” campaign, the Environmental Sanitation (ES) Regime, mandatory tray return at hawker centres, coffee shops, and food courts, and strict enforcement on littering.

• In 2023, Singaporeans’ satisfaction with the cleanliness of public spaces remained high at 94%.

• As at August 2024, about 6,000 specified high-risk premises have implemented the ES Regime, a robust framework stipulating areas to be cleaned and disinfected regularly including thorough periodic cleaning, thus assuring the public of higher sanitation standards.

• Singaporeans continued to demonstrate civic responsibility, with 90% Tray and Crockery Return Rate observed at hawker centres, coffee shops, and food courts. As a result, although enforcement on table littering has been stepped up since June 2023, only a small number of repeat offenders were issued tickets.

However, more can be done to address littering behaviours and the cleanliness of public toilets, especially in coffeeshops and hawker centres. We designated 2024 as the Year of Public Hygiene, to strengthen collective responsibility of the Government and community in maintaining a clean, safe, and liveable Singapore.

• Anti-littering enforcement blitzes were stepped up to target hotspots with higher offence rates and public feedback reports. The number of these enforcement exercises increased from 21 in 2023 to more than 100 in 2024.

• We incorporated innovative technology into our operations such as trialling thermal imaging cameras for better rat surveillance at outdoor and back-lane areas. This helped premises operators and stakeholders better coordinate cleaning, waste management, and rat control measures to reduce pest issues. We are also exploring using artificial intelligence and video analytics in our performance audits of cleaning companies, which will be more productive in detecting cleaning lapses and providing a cleaner environment for the public.

• To address the issue of toilet cleanliness, we partnered the community and businesses through the Public Toilets Taskforce to study and recommend solutions to bring about cleaner public toilets. With greater clarity on the root causes of dirty public toilets, the taskforce is examining measures that stakeholders can undertake under four key pillars:
  

  • Design and Infrastructure

  • Cleaning and Maintenance

  • Monitoring, Audit and Enforcement

  • Engagement and Outreach

Read more: Health and Wellness

Doing our part for a quality living environment

With our collective efforts, Singaporeans can continue to look forward to a quality living environment and an endearing home for ourselves and future generations.

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