How Singapore's housing model inspires B.C.'s affordability drive

Urban planner Louisa-May Khoo says she got a sense of déjà vu when British Columbia Premier David Eby announced the B.C. Builds housing program earlier this year.

Khoo, a University of British Columbia public scholar, was a veteran of Singapore's planning and development sector starting in 1996 before arriving in Vancouver in 2018.

When Eby unveiled B.C. Builds in February, Khoo said many Singaporean philosophies were instantly recognizable in the provincial program, right down to the exact percentage points in one instance.

"B.C. Builds has pegged their rental rates at 30 per cent of the household income, for instance, and that's something the [Singapore Housing and Development Board] has always stuck by," Khoo said.

"Some of the regulations and proposals that I've seen in terms of the housing plan is very much inspired [by Singapore]."

Singapore's housing model, where the government plays a dominant role in land ownership, property development, financing and other related aspects of society, has been held up numerous times by others such as Eby as a path to affordability here in Canada.

But the idea isn't without its critics, especially when much of the policy may not be applicable in the Canadian social environment.

The B.C. Builds program aims to use "government, community and non-profit owned" land and $2 billion in low-cost financing to deliver middle-income homes.

Eby has said that more Singapore inspirations are coming for B.C.'s program. 

"We're starting with rental housing," Eby said during a February announcement. "We're going to move into housing for purchases as well. This is a model that has been used in Singapore, in Vienna … we know that it works, and we are taking that model and we're expanding it dramatically."

'Difficult to replicate'

To make the change by adopting the full Singaporean model, however, will be difficult, said Sock Yong Phang, a Singapore Management University economics professor.

The Singapore-based researcher, who co-authored a 2016 Asian Development Bank Institute report on the country's housing policies, said much of the country's unique take on housing came out of necessity.

Full adaptation in a different environment, therefore, will prove challenging, she said.

Singapore faces an acute problem of land scarcity, Phang said. "[So] it is a holistic framework of land-use planning and allocation, housing supply delivery, housing finance and regulation of housing demand to ensure affordable home ownership. 

"The framework in its entirety will be difficult to replicate in another setting."

State-owned land

Singapore, often described as a city-state, houses most of its 5.9 million residents on one main island totalling 730 square kilometres. That area is smaller than every top-15 most-populated census metropolitan areas in Canada, with the closest being Oshawa, Ont., at 903 square kilometres.

The lack of land was compounded by an equal lack in adequate housing when Singapore gained self-governance from the United Kingdom in 1959. 

Phang wrote in the report that less than nine per cent of the population was living in public housing at the time, "with the majority living in overcrowded pre-war, rent-controlled apartments, lacking access to water and modern sanitation," while "others faced housing conditions comparable to today's slums."

It led to the creation of the Housing and Development Board to build and sell public housing, as well as laws that gave government broad powers to acquire land for redistribution for "any public purpose."

As a result, Phang said about 90 per cent of Singapore's land is now state-owned, about 70 per cent of all housing units there are built by the government through the development board, and citizens are required to save money for retirement through a central fund that can be used to buy public housing.

The "tightly integrated land-housing supply and financing system" as described by Phang in the report resulted in Singapore having a 90-per-cent home-ownership rate since 1990.

"What we need to keep in mind when we think about Singapore is that it's a city-state, so the entire population is clustered in one larger urban expanse," said Kai Ostwald, director at UBC's Institute of Asian Research, who previously lived in Singapore.

"What that means in practice is that the kind of policies and the kind of interventions that a government in Singapore can make are next to impossible to replicate one-to-one in other contexts.

"So, at best, I think what's possible is that some elements of the approach that Singapore has taken to public housing can be adapted to different contexts."

'Hope for other cities'

For Khoo, one aspect that could be replicated in Canada is a more comprehensive approach to urban planning for decades ahead. 

"It's not just the housing, but it's also the facilities that come with it," she said. "So, the retail, the commercial … [the board] is actually responsible for the master planning of the town."

Khoo said she has heard the criticism against Singapore's housing model, but it does not take away from the fact that policy has largely achieved what it set out to do: provide citizens with a pathway to affordable home ownership.

"I do believe that Singapore has done housing well," she said. "It is certainly a beacon that holds hope for other cities wishing to emulate."

Khoo also said critics cannot dismiss the complexity of Singapore's approach, and that experts spend decades fine-tuning every aspect in society to align with the housing policy.

"People have said to me, 'You make it sound so easy.' But it is not quite a snapping of fingers. There is actual dogged diligence and a never-say-die attitude to working through each and every problem, big and small, to find creative ways around it to achieve what we see today."