Everyone who calls Singapore home should have a right to safe, stable, and affordable housing, which is becoming increasingly out of reach, and pushing residents into unconscionable debt. Our public housing system should cater to all long-term residents, regardless of marital status, race, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or citizenship. Those who are unhoused need much more comprehensive and accessible support. The construction of public housing should not require the exploitation of migrant labour, and migrant workers should be guaranteed decent accommodation, where they are free from surveillance and movement restrictions.
Click on each subsection to read more about the key issues and demands highlighted in the manifesto
One significant reason why housing has become unaffordable is that reselling one’s HDB flat has occupied the role of retirement financing in the absence of a nationalised pension scheme that provides retirement income at sufficient replacement rates. Secondly, high land cost often makes up the lion’s share (about 60%) of development costs for Built-to-Order housing. However, how the government arrives at this land price is frustratingly opaque. If housing can be affordable for all, the positive effects spill over into society when people experience safety and stability as a result of being able to access affordable housing.
Our Demands
Meeting Residents’ Needs: Housing Affordability and Availability
- Negate the large burden of land cost in the price of HDB flats.
- Price land set aside for public housing as a public good.
- Put in place policies to ensure retirement adequacy so that residents do not depend on selling their homes in order to retire comfortably.
- Provide security of tenure by implementing affordable lease renewal policies.
- Provide adequate housing relief during times of crisis
The Singapore government often touts a high rate of home ownership as a result of sound policies in the public housing system. However, this obscures the fact that the regulations surrounding access to housing systemically exclude vulnerable members of the community, notably non-citizen single parents of Singaporean / PR children, unwed singles below the age of 35 (which include LGBTQ+ couples, since same-sex marriage is illegal in Singapore) and single parents below the age of 21.
The government purports that the EIP exists to promote racial integration and prevent the formation of racial enclaves. However, given the country’s racial demographic, the EIP only prevents the clustering of ethnic minority households while cementing the clustering of Chinese households, ensuring that all neighbourhoods have a majority of Chinese households. The EIP is therefore discriminatory against ethnic minorities. While individuals can file an appeal against the EIP, most appeals have not been successful. In 2022, it was reported that 66% of appeals against the EIP failed.
Our Demands
Access to Housing for All
- Allow all Singaporeans, Permanent Residents and Long-Term Resident Parents with Singaporean / PR children to be able to buy or rent public housing under HDB.
- Abolish the Ethnic Integration Policy
- Increase the income cap for rental housing.
- Improve the accessibility of rental housing for single parents.
- Shorten waiting times for rental housing applicants who are unhoused or at risk of being houseless.
- Improve the conditions of rental housing.
- Support the housing needs of children and family members of incarcerated persons.
Currently, in order to keep construction costs low, the government provides building contracts to private construction companies via a bidding system. Bidding drives contractors to keep costs unsustainably low in order to remain competitive, sometimes reducing costs below the actual cost of inputs.
The main area where contractors can make cuts to costs below the actual value of the input is in labour, which is where most exploitation of migrant labour occurs. This results in many dehumanising conditions that migrant workers are subject to, such as rampant wage theft, overwork, inedible food, and unsafe working conditions.
Our Demands
Reducing Profiteering in Housing Construction
- Place the construction of public housing under a state-owned construction workforce
- Tie the price of construction to cost fundamentals, instead of relying on the open market.
The most recently published count of unhoused individuals (2020) found that there are roughly 1,000 unhoused individuals in Singapore, excluding unhoused individuals who are being provided shelter in temporary, crisis, or transitional accommodation.
Insufficient research, data and policy attention to unhoused people is a symptom of the authorities’ preference to obscure the reality that houselessness exists in Singapore.
Unhoused people are some of the most vulnerable members of our society, and require long-term assistance to find stable housing, instead of policies aimed primarily at keeping them off the streets in an effort to reduce their visibility.
Our Demands
Acknowledging, Decriminalising, and Addressing Houselessness
- Decriminalise houselessness.
- Have public agencies undertake an accurate and regular street count of unhoused individuals every year.
- Improve outreach services to better connect houseless individuals to housing support.
- Lower entry requirements to overnight shelter services and ensure immediate availability of shelter and access to social services.
- Guarantee rental flat housing and unconditional financial assistance for unhoused individuals.
Foreign workers comprise nearly 40% of Singapore’s labour force, of which nearly 50% are either Work Permit (WP) holders who are Construction, Marine shipyard and Process Workers (CMPW) or Migrant Domestic Workers (MDWs). The terms of their employment dictate that their accommodation, to a large extent, is the responsibility of their employers. There are major deficiencies in the living standards of how both groups of migrant workers are housed.
Our Demands
Dignified, Safe, and Locationally Accessible Accommodation for Migrant Workers
For Construction, Marine shipyard and Process Workers:
- Specify safe and dignified standards of accommodation based on requirements decided by migrant workers who reside in dormitories.
- Remove zoning restrictions about where migrant worker dormitories can be built.
- Ensure that workers have freedom of movement.
For Migrant Domestic Workers:
- Strengthen the enforcement of the list of requirements for acceptable accommodation stated on the MOM website and as mandated by the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act for migrant domestic workers.
- Grant live-out options to migrant domestic workers (MDWs).