I wish someone would nail this down: Is there anywhere else in the world where public housing -- that is, dwelling units built from taxpayers' money and sited on state land, ie. land held in trust for the people by the state -- has yielded gross profits for its tenants (yes, tenants, despite the label "home ownership" which is technically correct since it does not imply property ownership) when the "asset" is "sold" to another party?
The corollary to the above is: Is there anywhere else in the world where public housing units can be even sold off by the tenants? This is, I presume, novel since I believe that public housing is rented out by the state or even provided free/at a nominal charge elsewhere.
This is not to say that Singapore's approach to public housing policy is fundamentally flawed. Thanks to this policy, some 80 per cent of Singaporeans and PRs reside in dwellings that have made policy makers elsewhere in the world envious and desirous of learning from the Little Red Dot. Importantly, it has a national security element: a concrete stake (sorry, the pun just slipped out!) makes one more prepared to defend one's turf, one's homeland.
Here's another bizarre sign of topsy-turvy: Where else in the world can you find Mercedes, Audis and BMWs (not just their entry-level models, mind you; and not just a few here and there) parked in public housing estate carparks? While "exoticars" are indeed rare in such carparks, they are not non-existent.
So, has this success of a socially-motivated enterprise -- gradually tweaked over the decades to feature free-market profit-making elements -- now bred what the commies used to call "internal contradictions"? I think this is what housing minister Khaw Boon Wan was getting at in this ST story today (Mar 11):
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Public policy and keeping the peace: When "just follow, lor" ain't enough
Law minister K. Shanmugam seemed to face a different dilemma: home dwellers, especially public housing dwellers, who do not get along with each other:
Hmm. I find the example given intriguing. Show me a cat that is so predictably trainable and/or obedient and I'll show you Garfield:
Okay, I'm open to being corrected, since I am told cats can be -- through certain Pavlovian methods -- be beguiled into doing what you want done.
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Public policy: Thinking out of the box
Policy makers, we now know, do not have a monopoly on wisdom. Indeed, among the plethora of ideas thrown up by ordinary people who, say, write to the press, are well-reasoned ones. Those that are the result of "thinking out of the box" are gems. I think this TODAY reader's arguments (Mar 11) are worth a policy maker's deep consideration:
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There is also the matter of how "in touch" are policy makers? This ST story (Mar 11) headlined "What does it mean to be middle class?", by Hong Kong correspondent Li Xueying, tells a cautionary tale...
This portion below is one that takes the cake!...
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Post Tortoise
With that cautionary tale above in mind, here's a "fictional" story that CC sent:
An elderly farmer was in the Emergency Ward having his hand stitched, due to an accident with a piece of farm machinery.
The doctor carrying out the procedure struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to politicians and their role as leaders.
The old farmer said, "Well, you know, most politicians are 'Post Tortoises'.''
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him, what a 'Post Tortoise' was?
The old farmer said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a tortoise balanced on top, that's a post tortoise."
The old farmer, seeing the puzzled look on the doctor's face, continued to explain.
"You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, he's elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumb idiot put him up there to begin with."
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