Hacker News Reader

Comment by shuckles | Hacker News Reader

The HDB system's outcomes aren't great if not paired with abundant supply. Singapore market rents are growing fast, HDBs have all sorts of unsavory (to Americans) queueing and prioritization rules, and there are plenty of rent seeking HDB owners who sublet their flats at high prices.

View on HN

The whole point of the HDB system was to streamline and standardize the creation of decent quality housing. It worked spectacularly at creating abundant supply. Compared to the 1950s the supply has taken off like a rocket.

The "problem" was that population growth kept up with supply - initially through an extremely high birth rate and then, when that collapsed, through extremely high immigration rates.

Given the high population growth and low availability of land the growth in housing stock has been pretty amazing. Both the quality and the quantity certainly blows the US and Europe out of the water.

I don’t think Singapore has run out of (re-)developable land. It has lots of low rise homes that have very low land value tax assessments. In any case, I agree their current situation is better than ours, but my point that the HDB model cannot solve housing costs without abundant supply stands.

IMO the ethnic quotas would be the most unsavory aspects to an American audience.

Suspect "virtually everyone lives in government housing projects" would be an even harder sell...

HDBs are high quality and safe. I don’t think most Americans would object to owning their own apartment if the builder and operator happened to be a government agency.

I suspect plenty of Americans would object just to the "apartment" bit! A successful housing solution for Singapore's situation but one that's a million miles from the suburban American Dream.

The safety of HDBs, apart from reflecting Singapore's low crime rate in general, also reflects Singapore not having the idea that high rise government housing projects are somewhere only the poor and desperate would want to live and their condition a reflection of Singapore not having the belief that government budgets are things to be slashed....

At the very least, the apartments would have to be quite large, closer to a house in floor area, for Americans to accept them. Few Americans would be willing to raise 2 children in an apartment less than 200 m^2.

No, apartments are very popular with Americans. The few that are allowed to be built are very expensive.

A significant fraction of Americans would object explicitly on that point, yeah. Wouldn't matter if the apartments had solid gold toilets.

Neoconservatism is a hell of a drug.

Wouldn't matter for the areas that could actually use more housing (dense urban ares), but there is an extremely strong anti-government streak in the U.S.

The various preferences for heterosexual, married couples with kids wouldn’t be popular either.

Which is funny, because that's the very thing that a nation should be very invested in: producing more of its own citizens.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com