Having a home is a priority for young families. The PAP Government has accelerated the construction of public housing to meet this demand. The launch of over 2,000 Build-to-Order (BTO) flats with waiting times under three years in October demonstrates the government’s commitment to helping first-time buyers achieve homeownership.
The Housing Board on October 6 announced it would launch 2,085 flats across three projects in Bukit Batok and Sengkang in the upcoming BTO sales exercise in October. The Bukit Batok flats will have a waiting time of two years, one of the shortest wait periods ever.
In 2024, HDB will offer 2,876 flats in 2024 with waiting times under three years. This means HDB will meet its goal of launching between 2,000 and 3,000 such flats each year by 2025, a year ahead of schedule.
Over the past few years, the government has ramped up flat supply to address construction delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. About 10,500 flats were completed in the first eight months of 2024, most of which were in projects that had been delayed due to the pandemic. With the completion of these flats, HDB has now finished about 94 per cent of the delayed housing projects.
National Development Minister Desmond Lee said that the remaining delayed projects are on track to be completed within the next six months.
This is not the first instance when the PAP government has faced challenges relating to housing.
In the early 1960s, our founding fathers had the daunting task of housing an entire population. In under two years, they built over 21,000 units, and transformed Singapore for generations.
By contrast, the previous colonial government had taken 33 years to build a measly 18,000 flats.
The PAP government has always acted quickly to address issues facing Singaporeans, including housing. The government knows that the root of the problem is building more supply for housing and does its best to try and fix this problem, Prime Minister and then Deputy PM and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong said during the 2023 Budget Debate.
Between 2018 and 2020, before the pandemic impacted housing supply, the government built between 15,000 and 17,000 BTO flats annually, despite opportunistic criticism that we were overbuilding.
In 2019, the Worker’s Party’s working paper wanted BTO units to be reduced to around 9,000.
During a 2023 parliamentary motion on affordable and accessible public housing, Desmond Lee said that if the government had reduced supply to the WP’s 2019 level, it would have resulted in an even more severe housing shortage.
Currently, HDB has committed to recalibrating its building programme over time so that flats with waiting time under three years make up a larger proportion of new supply.
In addition to launching more flats with shorter wait times, the government has introduced the First-Timer (Parents and Married Couples) category to give greater priority to young couples and families with young children. It also increased the supply of Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme flats for families waiting for their units to be completed.
Singaporeans, especially young families, can rest assured the PAP government will continue to support them throughout their housing journey.