Louis Chua on cost of living crisis

As a country with close to 90 per cent home ownership rate, those who need to rent a flat form a minority, said MP Louis Chua. The Government should increase the supply of flats both for purchase and for rent, he said in Parliament on Tuesday (Nov 7). Mr Chua pointed out that soaring rents impact young Singaporeans who have not been able to purchase a flat but need their own space. He urged the Housing and Development Board to take a needs-based approach and review all requests for public rental holistically, especially for households that are currently renting in the open market and cannot afford the high resale prices today but would need a place to call home in the interim. Mr Chua noted that the pace of development of rental flats is expected to slow down even further - there are only 900 public rental flats currently under construction and will be completed in the next five years. In other words, just about 180 flats per year, he said. “Why are we constructing new rental flats at a pace which is a mere 10 per cent of that in the past decade? To minimise the agonising wait for an allocation of a rental flat, and to alleviate the worries of many Singaporeans who have not been able to access a rental flat, it is imperative that we do not neglect the housing needs of vulnerable Singaporeans in our single-minded pursuit of home ownership as the only acceptable housing model in Singapore,” he said. Mr Chua stressed the need to resume the pace of rental flat construction - to be at least on par with the net increase between 2011 and 2020.