I currently live in an HDB property in Singapore. It's great.
I'm originally from the Netherlands, which traditionally had a strong social housing sector: regions and cities would have their own housing corporations ('woningbouwcorporaties') tasked with building affordable housing. Those corporations were given government support after 1950 to help with the post-WW2 housing shortage, but were semi-privatized in the mid-90s, and in 2015 their scope was strongly curtailed.
It would be reductive to say that this privatization was the sole cause of the current housing crisis affecting the Netherlands -- rents and housing prices have also increased a lot in Singapore since Covid -- but it probably didn't help.
No. Social housing is government owned and rented. Singapore is government built and sold. Singapore is a tiny island with little space. The government has to control what is built where and avoids it turning into Hong Kong slums.
>Public housing, also known as social housing, is subsidized or affordable housing provided in buildings that are usually owned and managed by local government, central government, nonprofit organizations or a combination thereof.
Wikipedia says 'usually'. And, yes, you are right that the individual HDB flats are typically owned by individual families (though the government also owns some and rents them out, but that's the exception).
However, HDB still does a lot of the managing. Eg HDB manages the lifts and other common spaces. They organise getting the exterior repainted, or general upgrading works to plumbing etc.
HDB also subsidises the price of a flat when you buy directly from them. There's a reason they have maximum income caps for buying.
My unpopular opinion: HDB should declare victory and go home. They more than solved the original acute housing shortage they were created for.
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Singapore does a lot of things right. And HDB is, as usually a lot more competent than pretty much any other public housing programme anywhere else in the world. But that doesn't mean everything Singapore does (including HDB) is automatically a good idea forever.
Just like our local recreational drug policy could probably be improved by moving closer to what we do with the casinos. And the ban on vaping is just silly.
> However, HDB still does a lot of the managing. Eg HDB manages the lifts and other common spaces. They organise getting the exterior repainted, or general upgrading works to plumbing etc.
By that logic every apartment block is public housing.
If the criteria to be public housing is that someone manages the lifts, lights, and exterior. Then all apartment blocks are public housing. Condos and HDBs are all public housing.
Your logic is infallible. Of course, your premise is rubbish.
It's not about whether 'someone' is managing these things. Even an owner-occupier is managing their own lights and exteriors.
A useful criterion is whether the government (or an arm of the government) is managing these things. Like HDB, but unlike your typical condo management organisation. It's far from the only criterion, but it's a useful indicator.
"Singapore has one of the highest home ownership rate in the world, due to the commitment of our founding fathers since the very beginning of nation building. Today, there are more than 1 million HDB flats across the island, home to close to 80% of Singapore's resident population. The schemes highlighted below help Singaporeans meet their housing needs at different life stages."
So the dictionary says that HBD housing is public housing, wikipedia says that HBD housing is public housing, and the Singaporean government says that HBD housing is public housing.
For the benefit of any others (miraculously) still reading, I will repeat the statement of fact that you continue stubbornly to deny against all evidence: "'social housing' is a general term that implies subsidization and affordability rather than any one specific ownership model".
For the benefit of any others. Bluebarbet has never been to Singapore and ultimately doesn’t know what he’s talking about. HDBs are not public housing. It’s land control because Singapore is so tiny.
Primarily Vienna. There's nothing complicated about what Vienna did - other cities just prefer to please billionaires instead of providing services to citizens.
Do you actually know what Vienna did? Because the overwhelming number of people who reference the city basically just repeat a few dubious talking point about restricting rent.
Well, Berlin's history was a bit more complicated. Between the 'losing the empire' bit and the 'surplus housing' was a whole generation or two of the city being divided and one part living under siege and the other under real world socialism.
But you are right, that surplus housing is no longer a thing in Berlin.
I don't know about restricting rent but they certainly had a progressive tax on high rents, a 1% income tax to fund housing, and then used that to build a ton of high quality social housing with balconies and amenities for all. I also like to think it helped that they slapped a big sign on each to proudly let people know it was their tax dollars at work.
I didn't stay in social housing while I living there but I never once heard people complain about it. They basically just didn't think much about it at all and felt it was a good system and then would ask me why the US only makes it for poor people.
I mean, to be fair, having your population semi-permanently depleted by two major wars and a fundamental loss of national economic centrality and prestige will help you keep a fixed stock of social housing lasting longer.
No one absolutely no one considers that to be remotely true. Look at French banlieues, German Plattenbauten or British Councils - they are synonymous with Crime and physical as well as cultural despair.
And while Vienna or Stockholm are often cited as Utopias, the citees often intentionally leave out the negative side effects (ie. Waiting-times of years, housing black markets, etc) that are eventually coming full circle to the thing they were proposed as a solution against. Just with much less transparency.
There have been social housing projects that paint a more nuanced picture, eg Hamburg-Steilshoop, where a giant block (for EU standards) has been erected in the 1970s and was basically divided into three sections: one to be run by existing housing coops, one by owner occupants, and one by the city. Needless to say that those parts run by the city were quickly becoming a prime example of a German „banlieue“ while the other parts became a prime example for those eager to dismiss any criticisms.
This was aggravated by modern city planning with it's separation of function that left these new districts with no third spaces, barely any shops and large spaces of 'no man's land' between buildings.
In classics European cities there were shops on street level and dense blocks that generated demand for those.
The post war developments followed the 'high rise in the park' concept, lots of greenery and parking lots between buildings to create a mid density neighborhood.
But there is no life in the streets and you have to walk a lot through repetitive environment but to do anything you still have to go to the 'old city'.
High rises were far from being the only, or even the dominant model for social housing in Europe. Different plans such as low rises, semi-detached houses and single homes also got implemented.
Those are even worse - you need a certain density for urban life, otherwise you'll just create large empty spaces that belong to no-one, so nobody feels responsible for them.
> Look at French banlieues, German Plattenbauten or British Councils - they are synonymous with Crime and physical as well as cultural despair.
Sure, because what existed before was absolutely fine [1][2]...
The truth is that these policies worked so well that pepole completely forgot what existed before. The alternative to housing projects wasn't a country without crime or despair, it was more crime, shanty towns, people displaced by war and unable to get back to normal life, and young workers unable to move to places of employment in the postwar economic boom. That topic was so uncontroversial that every european government, leftwing or rightwing, did it.
I agree that a social housing project alone isn't enough to fix every problem, but that doesn't make it the source of other unsolved problems.
