During the year 1947, overcrowding was the worst problem of Singapore causing it to suffer housing shortage (Sim, n.d.). At as early as 1927, there were public housing projects made by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), an authority that aims to provide low-cost housing. Yet, this initiative was not enough for the fast-growing population’s demand (Chew, 2010).
By the year 1960, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) was established to replace SIT. HDB focused on providing public flats for low-income and middle-income groups. For a span of three years, 31,317 public flats were built which gave a lot of people an affordable and good quality home (HDB, 2015).
However, to continuously persuade citizens to purchase their own home, Singapore…show more content… One of the infrastructure spending projects was public housing. After the creation of the Housing Development Board (HDB) in 1960, public housing expanded and constitutes one of the most extensive housing programs ever created (Vasoo & Lee, 2001). The public housing comprised of apartments sold and produced by the state. Singaporeans are allowed to purchase such apartments on two occasions. This policy enables development of an active resale market (Vasoo & Lee, 2001) for the state-built dwellings when families opt to upgrade. In fact, the government supports housing mobility through moving to larger units. According to Lee Kuan Yew (2000), home ownership is the main essence of the state’s housing policy. This social policy was also designed to promote macroeconomic development. According to Vasoo and Lee (2000), the housing policy enabled the goal of sharing profits from real-estate homeowners and controlling inflation. The HDB and CPF created a mechanism such that returns from investment are evenly spread out among people. As for inflation, realizing the potential of public housing and social security to influence consumption and expenditure, the government carefully manipulated the rate of CPF contribution (Lee,