Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at HDB Awards Dinner 2024

Oct 22, 2024

Mr Tan Meng Dui, CEO/HDB

Board Members

Colleagues

Industry partners

Ladies and gentlemen

Introduction 

Good evening. It is my pleasure to join you at the HDB Awards Ceremony.

I would like to congratulate all our consultants and all our builders, all our partners who are receiving awards tonight for construction, design, and engineering excellence. Thank you for working with us to deliver good quality HDB homes for Singaporeans.

In fact, before I came to the hall, I had the opportunity to meet many of the representatives of the firms winning awards tonight, getting a sense of the essence of the spirit with which you approach the project. 

Commitment to Home Ownership 

This year marks 60 years since the Home Ownership for the People Scheme was first introduced back in 1964. Because of our partnership over the decades, Singapore has become a nation of homeowners. Today, 80% of Singaporeans live in HDB homes. Out of these, some 9 in 10 households own the flats they live in – making Singapore a country with one of the highest home ownership rates in the world, bearing in mind that we are a small city-state.

Building more homes for Singaporeans

As we celebrate these achievements, we have to keep evolving and improving our policies to meet changing needs and aspirations. 

Before we look at what’s ahead, we should acknowledge how difficult the past few years has been. The pandemic caused our industry to suffer a major setback, unprecedented. Projects were delayed, cashflow was tight and costs soared across the industry. Supply chains and manpower were disrupted. But thanks to your hard work and strong partnership with HDB, we have made significant progress in catching up. By early next year, we will have delivered all the BTO projects that were delayed because of the pandemic.

Your support has also made it possible for us to remain on track to fulfil our commitment of launching 100,000 new flats between 2021 and 2025. 

New Housing Areas in the North

Looking ahead, we must maintain a stable supply of new homes, to continue to meet broad-based demand and help Singaporeans fulfil their home ownership aspirations. A sufficient supply of new flats is also crucial to ensure the property market remains stable.

Unlike in the past, where we were able to build on large tracts of greenfield land, in recent years we have had to tap on more infill sites. We have also announced plans to build more HDB flats in more central parts of Singapore, such as the Greater Southern Waterfront, Pearl’s Hill, and Turf City.

But we will continue to build in more new areas as well. Earlier this year, I announced plans for Chencharu in Yishun, where we will offer around 10,000 new homes by 2040, of which at least 80% will be set aside for public housing. This will provide a sizeable supply of affordable new homes in the North.

Today, I am glad to share that we will be building another 14,000 new homes in two new housing areas – the first is Sembawang North and the second is Woodlands North.

First, Sembawang North. About 10,000 new homes are planned in this new area, with about 8,000 homes set aside for public housing. Residents can look forward to a new Neighbourhood Centre within the heart of the new estate, with an array of retail and dining options. This will be located along a green spine that connects residents from existing neighbourhoods to the south, to the waterfront in the north as the Sembawang shipyard redevelops in the future. We have also planned for a 1ha park with recreational facilities such as playgrounds to enliven the outdoor space.

The first HDB project in Sembawang North will be launched next year.

The next site is Woodlands North. Back in 2017, we had announced plans to transform Woodlands as the northern regional centre and land gateway to Singapore.

One major development is the upcoming Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System (RTS) Link, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. This will play a significant role in our transformation plans for the Northern Gateway to become a vibrant mixed-use commercial node with high-value manufacturing and general industries. Residents in Woodlands North will benefit from faster cross-border travel as well as better access to more job opportunities that are closer to home.

Woodlands North will offer more than 4,000 new flats, and the first project is also scheduled for launch next year.

There is a lot of work ahead of us. To all our industry partners here tonight, we seek your continued support so we can deliver more quality homes for Singaporeans in the coming years.

Housing Policy as Social Policy

Even as we build more homes, we must not forget that public housing policy is intrinsically linked to our national social objectives. HDB flats must remain affordable and accessible so that Singaporeans can have a roof over their heads, maintain a stake in the nation and set up families.

In the last couple of years, we have introduced the First-Timer (Parents and Married Couples) category. This category seeks to improve accessibility for this key group. We have committed to launching 2,000 to 3,000  Shorter Waiting Time flats every year, to help Singaporeans get their homes quicker. These are flats with wait times of three years or less. We have also doubled the supply of flats under the Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme (PPHS) for households who are waiting for their new flats, to better support marriage and parenthood.

We also increased the Enhanced CPF Housing Grant for eligible families to help improve housing affordability. We are also piloting a new White Flat concept during this October’s BTO exercise, to give home buyers greater flexibility to configure their new homes to suit their needs through different life stages.

All these moves that I have just articulated as well as many others we’ve rolled out recently, will continue to help ensure Singaporeans remain a nation of homeowners.

New Flat Classification Framework

One of the most significant moves we have made in recent years is the introduction of the New Flat Classification Framework, which was just rolled out during the BTO exercise last week. 

Under the new framework, we will classify BTO projects into Standard, Plus, and Prime, based on their locational attributes of the projects. HDB will provide additional subsidies for Plus flats in choicer locations, and Prime flats in the choicest locations to keep them affordable, and also impose additional restrictions to ensure fairness.

This will enable us to achieve three important objectives.

First, it will enable us to keep home ownership affordable, even in attractive areas in Singapore. If HDB had priced such flats without additional subsidies to reflect their higher market values, these flats would have remained out of reach for many families. 

The second goal is to ensure a good social mix in our HDB estates, including in choicier locations. We will resist the forces of gentrification by ensuring that flats in attractive locations remain affordable and accessible to a wide range of Singaporeans. Without this move, we could erode the social cohesion that we have painstakingly built up over many decades.

Third, it will help us keep the housing system of subsidies fair. If we lowered prices in these choicier locations without tighter conditions or a subsidy recovery, owners of Plus and Prime flats could earn a significant windfall when they ‘cash out’, thereby worsening the ‘lottery effect’.

The ongoing BTO launch marks the first time that we are launching Standard, Plus and Prime flats in one exercise. Based on the latest numbers from yesterday, there seems to be healthy demand for the Plus and Prime flats given their attractive attributes. 

We are also seeing strong demand from singles for 2-room flexi flats. This likely comes from pent-up demand, as it is the first time singles can apply for flats all across the island. We expect demand to stabilise over time, and singles can look forward to the launch of more projects under the new framework.

We will continue to keep a close watch on these trends and adjust our policies accordingly, so that public housing remains affordable, accessible and fair for all Singaporeans.

Conclusion

Let us continue to build well-designed and quality homes and in doing so, fulfil the home ownership aspirations of Singaporeans. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for being an integral part of this journey. In fact, we are celebrating and uplifting the individual professionals who have worked so hard to make these projects the success that they are.

Congratulations once again to all our winners tonight. I hope you all have a wonderful evening and a chance to network with one another. Thank you.