Boon Wan thinking aloud about housing

In today’s paper, Boon Wan was quoted thinking aloud about housing policies that were changed and the possibility of more changes. Two key points were mentioned, to remove or not to remove the income ceiling and that HDB should be the trend setter of price and not market forces. He said HDB may not be able to influence fully the prices of private properties, but it could set the price of public housing. Finally someone from the Govt got the common sense to know this, that being the biggest developer of public housing, actually a monopoly, the Govt can determine the prices of public housing. Believe it or not, it is true. I am enlightened.

The issue of removing the income ceiling received the same stupid comments from daft Singaporeans, that by doing so, it would mean that there will be more competition for public housing from those earning more. Hey Minister of Education, the education system has failed miserably to make Singaporeans think independently. So far they can only think, now that is an over statement, they can only parrot the official view impregnated into their dull piece of grey matter in between their ears. Why should there be more competition, or what is the cause of more competition when the ceiling is removed? Supply, it is supply that is causing the problem, silly you. When the Govt builds enough, where is the fear of competition from the wage earners? Those who earn a few dollars more are still the average Singaporeans that need housing. And the fact that they need public housing speaks well of their finance. The rich are those that are selling their properties for $300m, $100m or $50m.

This seed of false envy planted in the minds of daft Singaporeans is very difficult to remove. We have average Singaporeans, all the employee type that draw a salary excluding ministers, top civil servants and top management, staring at each other with green eyes thinking that the other wage earners that earn a few dollars more must be deprived from public housing, must take up a million dollar mortgage to buy private. When would employee grade Singaporeans stop bickering and fighting among themselves for public housing when the fault is all because the Govt refuses to build enough, especially over the last decade?

Boon Wan has slowly started to come around to his senses that public housing is for all Singaporeans. No Singaporeans should be victimised, discriminated from buying public housing flats. All Singaporeans are equal under heaven at least in doing NS, in their rights to buy a roof over their heads. Why are those, who are neither rich nor poor, be deprived from buying public housing and made to defend this country in NS just the same? Can or should the Govt deprived Singaporeans who have served NS, who pledged to fight and defend this country, from buying HDB flats when new citizens who have not done NS be allowed to buy?

The foul up in public housing is smelling and nauseating. And Boon Wan is still defending his predecessor for a job well done. He refused to acknowledge that his predecessor fouled it all up by over building and then compounded the problem by not building. And the biggest or silliest mistake was that the little excess was not excess at all when the immigration door was swung wide open and horrors of all horrors, there were millions of foreigners coming in, and even with the excess it was not enough. And Boon Wan said, one must not be stubborn, when faced with the influx of foreigners buying up everything, his predecessors still refused to budge and continued with his BTO scheme and claiming all was well.

Was everything well, was public housing well? Don’t tell me.