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Izzy's avatar

I'm an American who lives in Singapore and generally has great respect for the what the country has achieved in housing, transport, healthcare, etc. I think SG offers great inspiration for how to use public housing to guarantee a middle-class standard of living for all in a globalized / post-industrial world. I'm also in favor of more widespread social housing in any form. However, there are some important details to note before using SG as a model:

- Building out the HDB system required levelling entire historic villages in the 60s-80s. The reason the HDBs are so economically mixed today (hawkers live next to investment bankers) is that the majority of citizens were forcibly moved two generations ago. This is only possible with an authoritarian government, and we couldn't (and shouldn't) do the same. But without wide-scale destruction of existing housing, there will always be pressure for the small number of units to be given to those most in need --> concentration of poverty.

- HDB developments work because they are largely (a) mixed-use development, with lots of light retail; and (b) transit-oriented development, built in conjunction with new metro lines. Large HBD estates are structured as a stand-alone community, with a grocery store, medical clinic, primary school, hawker centre and MRT stop all within walking distance. This is total urban planning, not just building things.

- The HDB allocation system is baked into the entire Singaporean social contract: every citizen pays payroll taxes into an account called a CPF, which functions like a 401(k). This fund can be used for the down payment for your HBD. This in turn works because you can only get a HDB when you turn 35 or get married, whichever comes first. If you a buy a private property before then, you forfeit your right to public housing. Therefore, the vast majority of citizens live with their parents into their early thirties or beyond. I feel like we more individualistic Americans would object to this way of the government prescribing our life path, but copying just one element of the system without the set of complementary institutions is likely to be much less successful.

- One of the ways that SG keeps the cost of HDBs down is by building them using South Asian migrant laborers who are paid $300-500 a month and sleep 20 to a room. American society doesn't seem to be willing to countenance having such a system in agriculture, let alone building our biggest cities.

This conversation reminds me of the 'varieties of capitalism' political economy theories. Basically, there are multiple equilibria in the labor-industrial-capital institution space. One equilibrium may be more optimal than another, but complementarities between institutions mean that copying one policy without the others does not necessarily make you better.

We need to build affordable housing in high-demand cities whenever and however we get a good chance, but for strategy purposes I think it's better to look to the European models of social housing (I know the Netherlands and Austria are particularly good at this) than Singapore's.

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Russell Morgan's avatar

Would an expansion of the housing voucher program be a good start?

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