Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the launch of HDB Community Week 2022
May 28, 2022
A very good morning to HDB CEO, Mr Tan Meng Dui, Dr William Wan, colleagues from the MND family, partners, friends, award winners, ladies and gentlemen. Also a very good morning to our online friends who are joining us virtually.
We couldn’t hold our HDB Community Week physically for the last two years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
So I am very delighted to join you in person today, to celebrate your efforts in building strong communities in our HDB towns.
The theme this year is ‘LIFE in the Heartlands’, and this is our tenth Community Week.
We started it in 2012, as we renewed our focus on community-building in our HDB heartlands. We’ve made good progress, but there’s still more to do.
Today, let me offer some reflections on how our heartland communities have played a key role in fostering a kinder and more cohesive society, and how we can continue to strengthen this role in the years to come.
Our Heartlands as Our Shared Anchor
Singapore has always been very diverse – we come from different races, religions, family backgrounds.
Yesterday evening, there was a religious festival at a Chinese temple and I brought some colleagues to the event from MND and I invited the temple leadership to show them around and have a dialogue. I think this enriched their life experience.
This diversity is a strength. We benefit from the richness of different cultures and perspectives.
But diversity can also lead to disagreement and friction, if we don’t make the effort to understand one another. I was just asking my colleague CEO Mr Tan Meng Dui to send me the video [that was played earlier during the event on neighbourliness]. It is a nice, heart-warming video that showed the friendliness, kindness, warmth and familial ties even amongst neighbours. But sometimes, as we know, the opposite can be true.
The rise of the Internet and social media have added to the diversity I just spoke about, exposing us to cultures, ways of life and ideas from around the world, and making it easier for us to connect with people who are far away, physically. But online spaces have also made it easy to interact only with those who are close to us, culturally or ideologically – and to exclude others who are different or who disagree. Sometimes it is just an algorithm that causes you to narrow your focus, and exposes you to less of the diversity that really is in life around us. It focuses you to see only what they think you want to see.
So even as we embrace the benefits of digitalisation, we should guard against forces that may divide our society. Some of these algorithms and rules are made far away and totally oblivious to the user.
In this respect, our HDB heartlands play a crucial role in fostering strong and cohesive communities.
The vast majority, some 80%, of our resident households live in HDB flats. And so HDB living forms an important part of the shared heritage and lived experience of many Singaporeans. Perhaps even more so today, as many of us spend more time in our local neighbourhoods, learning or working from home.
The fragrant aroma from a neighbourhood bakery, the hustle and bustle of our wet markets and hawker centres, the sounds and colours of different festivals in our heartlands.
These are some of the things that tie our communities together, regardless of race, religion or socio-economic status. They anchor us to a common sense of home and belonging.
Hence, even as Singapore and the world around us evolve, we want to help our HDB heartlands to continue to bring diverse Singaporeans together, and forge strong communities.
Fostering a Shared Experience
How do we achieve this?
First, we need the right infrastructure.
Our HDB towns don’t just comprise individual blocks and flats. We also include plenty of amenities and communal areas, where residents can mingle and interact – from community living rooms and roof gardens, to playgrounds, neighbourhood shops and senior activity centres.
So infrastructure must be there in the first place, to enable people to mix and interact, if they want to.
Second, we need the right enabling policies, so that our HDB neighbourhoods, in fact, reflect the diversity of our society.
For instance, the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) helps to ensure a balanced mix of ethnic groups, by capping the proportion of flats in each block and neighbourhood that can be owned by households from each ethnicity.
And we recently rolled out the Prime Location Public Housing model, or PLH – we launched two projects yesterday – so that housing estates in prime locations like the city centre and towns within the city area are accessible to more Singaporeans, not only the well-to-do.
These policies directly impact people’s housing choices. But we pursued them because we believe they are the right things to do, and they enable the infrastructure and the home that we build to in fact reflect our diversity. Because we need to counteract the strong social and economic forces that tend to divide cities and neighbourhoods, which we see in so many parts of the world.
Actually when you have a town, you could say why is an ethnic limit being pushed? Often it is because of people’s micro-choices. Your parents live in this area so you might all want to live there. Some areas tend to have a cultural ballast because of historical reasons, so certain groups just feel inclined to that area. Sometimes it is the estate around us – it is the food choices, the presence or absence of options for certain racial, religious, ethnic groups. And it is just that sense of convenience. There are many other forces, micro-forces, that when you add them all up together, result in potentially that kind of segregation.
Therefore, while the subconscious and the micro-effects push towards these kinds of concentrations, we therefore need to proactively counteract this, through infrastructure and the right policies that just act against those forces, and very active programming so we can get people to mix.
As I said, infrastructure and policies alone can only bring people together physically, and give them the opportunity to interact. Opportunity, which you can choose to seize or not to seize.
But to truly forge strong communities, we also need to actively encourage mixing and interaction. Get out of your comfort zone, and you will be just amazed by the diversity and warmth of people around us. We do this especially through ground-up active citizenry and good neighbourliness and kindness. Because it is the energy and initiative of our residents that really bring our HDB estates to life, and turn them into welcoming communities.
In fact, when I first became a Member of Parliament in 2011, as you know we do home visits every week. There was one block I recall, along Jurong West Street 41, I would never forgot. The top floor, young families with young children, they all knew each other. They were not part of any organisation, they were just friends, neighbours, and in fact felt like family. They looked out for each other. Sometimes when I would go around the void decks, I see them mingled together having a little party, celebrating birthdays, commiserating with each other when things do not go well, actively supporting each other. I just felt that sense of a bond. When one family moved out, they never really moved out. I would always see them come back, because that is where home is to them.
Community Initiatives Supported by HDB
Hence, we actively support residents who wish to make their HDB estates a more endearing home for all.
Lively Places Fund
For example, through the Lively Places Fund, we help to fund community projects that enliven our HDB neighbourhoods.
Last year, we supported 18 ground-up projects that reached out to more than 5,000 residents.
Ms Jewel Fong’s Peek a Book project is one example. As a mother herself, Ms Fong realised that many parents had, over time, accumulated many children’s books. To make good use of these collections, she and her neighbours set up a book exchange corner in the void deck of their HDB block in Tampines, so that their children could trade books, read more widely, and bond over reading. More than 450 books have been donated, and the book exchange corner continues to go strong!
There are many more examples of such ground-up initiatives:
Mr Jimmy Tan and his friends started pickleball clinics for the community in Jurong Spring;
Ms Doris Yuen and her team organised workshops to teach residents how to grow edible vegetables at Kampung Admiralty.
Mr Tee Kok Chuan and his volunteers at Meadow Grove actively bring people together through allotment gardening.
Thank you to all the teams for your selfless and pioneering spirit!
To find out more about these projects and how you can do something for your neighbours and community, do check out the HDB Community Week Digital Exhibition.
Friends of Our Heartlands
Next, we have our Friends of Our Heartlands volunteers, who actively engage with HDB residents to promote community bonding.
Over the years, our volunteers have reached out to over 158,000 people.
This year, we will celebrate 719 volunteers and organisations for their various contributions.
For example, students from West Spring Primary School will receive the Silver Award for organising a virtual cook-a-long session for residents and seniors, even teaching them to make ondeh-ondeh. Well done to our young volunteers!
We also celebrate Rachel Sonsun, a Secondary 4 student, will receive the Bronze Award. Rachel has been volunteering since she was 14, and regularly serves as an Eco-Guide by taking residents on tours of the eco-friendly features of Punggol Town. She has also worked with HDB to digitalise the Eco-Trails and create digital resources for other Eco-Guides and educators. A big thank you to Rachel for helping to promote environmental sustainability among our HDB communities. I am sure HDB eyeing you to join us in the future.
Congratulations to all our award winners! I hope that more Singaporeans will join us – just sign up with HDB online.
Working with Partner Organisations
Besides our volunteers, we also work closely with partner organisations, including tertiary education institutions such as ITE College Central, Republic Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic, and Temasek Polytechnic.
For example, students from ITE College Central have been organising Love Thy Neighbour, an event to promote appreciation and love for one’s neighbours. This year's edition focused on sustainability and the environment, and included a flower-making workshop. Thank you for your efforts!
#OurGoodNeighbours challenge
This year, for the first time, we also launched the #OurGoodNeighbours challenge, as part of HDB’s Good Neighbours Movement. We invited participants to share a video about what being a good neighbour means to them. We received close to 100 inspiring submissions, many of which highlighted how it is often the smallest gestures that are the biggest acts of kindness that brighten our neighbours’ lives – like holding the lift doors open, sharing goodies during festive celebrations, or greeting each other daily. We will recognise some of the best videos at the award presentation later.
Community Advisory Panel on Neighbourhood Noise
We continue to find ways to partner the community, to promote good neighbourliness.
For example, during the pandemic, as people spent more time at home, we’ve received more complaints about noise disturbances – from renovation work, late-night social activities, young people upstairs exercising and dropping their weights on the floor, or other causes.
We can all be more considerate to our neighbours, about the noise that we might make. Some residents have strived to do this, for example by informing their neighbours of upcoming renovation works, and adjusting their renovation schedules, where feasible.
In fact one of my HDB colleagues herself shared with me that when her flat had to undergo renovations, she was concerned about her neighbours’ well-being. She bought cake and went next door, upstairs and downstairs, to apologise and share a bit of sweetness. That made the renovation smoother for her, with the contractor, and most importantly the neighbours.
We can do more to establish community norms on noise management. That is why we have set up the Community Advisory Panel on Neighbourhood Noise. We are now seeking the public’s views on this issue. In fact, we’re holding our first Focus Group Discussions this very morning. And we will update the Municipal Services Office’s website, with more information on how you can share your suggestions. I know many people who encounter less-than-considerate neighbours will have strong views. What we do not want is for noise to grate on you, build up tension and spill over into open disputes with neighbours using authorities against each other. Then home no longer becomes a sanctuary, home becomes a war bunker where you fear going in and out of your homes. Home should be where the heart is, home should be where you rest, relax and celebrate daily life with your neighbours.
Conclusion
Let me conclude.
Ten years on from our first Community Week, our mission to foster strong neighbourhood communities has only become more important.
To achieve this, we need not only the right infrastructure and policies, as well as the right programmes and activities, but also initiative, drive, kindness, care and consideration by all of us. And to encourage residents to build strong social bonds, at the micro-level. At the micro-level and then you thicken those bonds across the island, Singapore’s communities are strong.
This isn’t easy. It takes dedication, heart, some courage and sustained effort. But it is critical for us to press on, so that we can foster a more cohesive society together. So that when challenges like the COVID pandemic or worse come our way, we have our neighbours to back us up, and they know we have their backs. Let’s all do our part. Every kind action we take, adds up.
Once again, let me thank all our volunteers, partners, and colleagues who have been working closely together to build strong communities in our HDB heartlands.
I wish you all an exciting and meaningful Community Week!