By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JULY 12, 2024 | Our country needs to take another look at how it views public housing. One nation has turned around the way public housing works, creating a new group of homeowners.
We’re talking about the Republic of Singapore, an island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia, which has six million residents.
Public housing in the United States generally gets a bad rap, and is looked down on by ordinary citizens. But in Singapore, it is far different, having more public housing of a far different kind, and creates areas of thriving living.
It’s all in how you plan it, the government of Singapore has demonstrated. The government in that country has used a significantly different way to think of public housing. It has also introduced another element, private ownership of government-built public housing, into the equation. And that has made a major difference in the way families live in that nation.
Liu Thai Ker in 2013; via Wikipedia.
It all started with a Singaporian, Liu Thai Ker, who was an American-trained architect from Yale University. After working with famed architect I.M. Pei, he returned home and eventually designed significant public housing communities far different than the American variety. He designed whole new neighborhood towns, self-sufficient neighborhoods with schools, shops and playgrounds.
He learned from experts that six to eight families living in close proximity created more social interaction. So he designed housing differently. His apartments are along a wide corridor with six to eight units, to encourage conservation among neighbors. His clustered housing flats dramatically change the way of life in Singapore. It also has the effect of keeping the communities up, clean and bright, and not turning themselves into slums or ghettos, seen in public housing in many parts of the world.
Contrast that with the design of public housing in the USA, which are often clusters of apartments, sometimes in low-rise, other times in high rise buildings, such as Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York, or one and two story units as seen around Gwinnett. These units often face one another. Often these are known in the USA as “the projects,” not a positive term, and often are concentrations of poverty.
The Singapore government added another element that really changed its housing. The government holds public lotteries to determine who gets new public housing units. The authorities in Singapore allowed those wanting the housing units to own their flats by tapping into their government retirement fund to pay for the down payment on the unit. It also has programs for grants toward ownership for low income families.
These developments have been going on for years, and they have substantially changed home ownership in Singapore. This started in the late 1960s, and today, many more Singapore families are living in what was built as public housing but now they own it. This in turn, results in that they maintain and keep up their property. In effect, this method of providing housing with cooperation of the government has produced well-kept public housing in a close community of neighbors.
Would something like this work in the United States? For it to do so, we’ll have to make major steps to change the way government operates such housing, and change the perception of public housing. With the right design, and by finding a way for citizens to own their public housing, in the long run, we’ll have less downtrodden housing and better living for the citizens.
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