Oral Answer by Ministry of National Development on rental flats
May 8, 2017
Mr Gan Thiam Poh: To ask the Minister for National Development,
(a) what are the reasons given by applicants for rental flats in the past ten years;
(b) what is the number of applicants for each reason;
(c) how many of them have ultimately managed to find their own flat to upgrade and returned the rental flat; and
(d) what is the current number of rental flats as compared with the total number of HDB flats.
Answer:
HDB’s public rental flats cater to households with no viable housing options or family support. In the last ten years, an average of 3,000 households a year were successful in their applications for rental flats. Of these, an average of 2,600 households a year decided to move into HDB rental flats, with the remainder cancelling their rental request, for example because they have found alternative housing options.
Households request for rental flats for a variety of reasons such as inability to afford a flat – perhaps there’s a divorce, loss of employment or medical issues. It will be difficult and not meaningful to break down rental requests by reason, as a household may have multiple overlapping reasons for applying to a public rental flat.
Of these households, about 1,600 have returned their rental flats to HDB and now have their own flats.
There are about a million HDB flats, of which about 56,000 are rental flats comprising a mix of 1- and 2-room apartments.