Adjournment motion on better designed, more spacious HDB rental flats to live well

Children from rental flats who are in a football programme run by Nee Soon South, Yishun Health and SportsSG have poorer hand-eye coordination and could not throw or catch as well as other children. This could be the result of space constraints at home. They have less room to play at home, and this affects their psychomotor development. MP Carrie Tan cited this example to make her case for the Government to study the impact of living spaces on early childhood development outcomes in an adjournment motion in Parliament on Tuesday (Nov 7). “How can we expect children to study, play, learn and grow up well physically, emotionally and mentally in such conditions?” she asked. Overcrowding due to smaller flat sizes can also lead to poor health as infections spread among family members more easily, she said. “Home becomes a place just to survive but not to thrive in. We underestimate the amount of energy it takes to overcome challenges inherent in the current rental housing premises, leaving less energy for constructive actions such as focusing on job performance, or school performance,” she said. Ms Tan said she often sees families with up to five children living in a two-room rental flat during her house visits. She believes aesthetic experiences can affect mood and indirectly promote health. Ms Tan also urged the Ministry of National Development to partner with the philanthropic and private sectors and work with local arts groups and designers to come up with uplifting designs and furnishings for rental flats. More spacious and uplifting designs are needed so that families living there can become financially independent and achieve social mobility quicker, she said. Rather than assume that a lack of personal motivation is to blame for poor social mobility outcomes, the Government should study possible enhancements to environmental factors. Ms Tan said the need for better design in HDB rental flats can be seen by the higher rates of high-rise littering, misuse or poor use of common chutes, dirty common corridors and void decks in these estates. In response, Minister of State for National Development Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim said his ministry will seek to further improve the design of flats. It is working to use design to overcome land and space constraints. For example, in recent years, HDB has started building two-room rental flats with an additional partitioned space that can be used as a child’s room or as a study or activity room. Assoc Prof Faishal said “progressive improvements” have been made to rental flats to enhance the design and living environment for tenants. Public rental flats have been built alongside owner-occupied flats in the same projects since 2014, and are in the same blocks and on the same floors. For example, in integrated blocks such as those at Marsiling Greenview and West Plains at Bukit Batok, public rental flats have similar finishes and fittings as two-room Flexi sold flats. For older public rental blocks, HDB typically upgrades them alongside owner-occupied blocks. Assoc Prof Faishal said helping families achieve social mobility and ensure that seniors age well, even in public rental flats, would require more than hardware alone. “We need to pair hardware with good social support and programming to make concerted efforts to address households’ needs and aspirations holistically,” he said.