Events

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Ho Kong Chong, Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore and Yale-NUS College

ABSTRACT

In principle, every Singaporean with steady monthly income is able to ‘rent’ a 99-year lease on a public housing flat, the size of the flat depends on one’s ability to consume. The total cost of the 99-year lease is paid at one-go when the flat is transferred to the leaseholder, as in a conventional mortgage of buying a property. Long-term lease is arranged like a conventional mortgage of buying any property. This is facilitated by permitting the leaseholder to use one’s compulsory social security savings, the CPF, to make the monthly payment on the mortgage. Hence, lease-holding is ideologically glossed as ‘homeownership’ and the leaseholder is free to sell the flat to another eligible leaseholder at market value and use the profit to upgrade their accommodation thus improving their housing wealth or otherwise reinvest it for further accumulation. Publicly subsidized housing has thus become an instrument for private accumulation. In principle, this opportunity is available to all Singaporeans. In reality, however, the overwhelming majority of working Singaporeans are unable to capitalize on the opportunity. Meanwhile, the relatively higher income tenants have been able to buy-sell-repurchase cycle to accumulate wealth; the larger the flat the greater the financial gain. Ironically, then, public subsidy that is meant to be social redistributive has turned into an instrument that aggravates wealth inequality among Singaporeans, offending public sense of fairness and justice.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Chua Beng Huat is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Sociology, Distinguished Professorial Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS); and Visiting Fellow at the Social Sciences and Urban Institute at Singapore Management University. His research areas include urban and public housing studies, political economy of Singapore and Cultural Studies in Asia. He is the author of Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore (2017), which was on the list of Best Books of 2018 by Foreign Affairs journal and Public Subsidy, Private Accumulation: The Political Economy of Singapore’s Public Housing (2024) among others.

Teo You Yenn is Associate Professor and Provost’s Chair in Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research focuses on poverty and inequality, governance and policy, gender and class inequalities. Ongoing projects focus on care/welfare regimes and minimum income standards. She is the author of Neoliberal Morality in Singapore: How Family Policies Make State and Society (Routledge, 2011) and This is What Inequality Looks Like (Ethos Books, 2018). She is a founding editor of AcademiaSG, which promotes Singapore scholarship and public discourse. More information about her work at: https://teoyouyenn.sg

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this hybrid talk has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to ziqi@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event