Building Harmonious Communities through Responsible Use of Common Spaces in Public Housing Estates

Mdm Deputy Speaker, community spaces are incorporated into the design of our Housing and Development Board (HDB) estates to enable residents and visitors to interact and bond socially. These areas are open to the public so that everyone can enjoy them. In some of the newer estates, beautiful sky gardens with gorgeous views are built to the delight of all. It is the hope of the Government that our people will be able to spend time with their families, loved ones, neighbours and friends in these pockets of nature in the midst of our public housing estates and build cohesive communities.

Unfortunately, not all users of these painstakingly-built sky gardens take care of these spaces nor consider the well-being of residents who live in the blocks where the gardens are located. Unlike beaches and public parks, the sky gardens are literally built onto the residents' blocks, where inconsiderate and irresponsible usage have a direct impact on the people living there.

Residents have been putting up with the inconvenience and nuisance caused by visitors to the sky gardens who behave in an inconsiderate manner. These troubles are especially pronounced during the weekends, eve of festive seasons and public holidays. My residents are well aware that these are public gardens, but they are extremely inconvenienced by the chaos, noise and the rubbish that the crowds would bring. There were occasions when the wait time for lifts is very long because many non-residents are using the lifts to visit the sky gardens and the carpark lots are also taken up.

Residents sometimes have to endure dirty lifts, overflowing dustbins, littering, illegal smoking and loud partying in common areas. On weekends, visitors go to these gardens late at night too and their noise also disturb residents trying to sleep. In the morning, the cleaners are confronted with cigarette butts and alcohol bottles that are carelessly littered all over the sky gardens. I would like to highlight that these are all additional costs being borne by the Town Councils.

My volunteers patrol the sky gardens at night after 10 pm to remind visitors to leave the sky gardens as residents need to have their rest.

However, my volunteers have been doing this for over two years. They are exhausted. Expecting them to patrol these gardens daily is not only time-consuming but unsustainable. The issues are no longer happening on a daily basis with the reopening of borders and lifting of restrictions on the gathering of people, but such problems are still observed during weekends and on festive occasions.

Over the last few years, we have tried so many measures to minimise the disamenities, together with HDB, Town Council, Residents' Committees, the National Environment Agency (NEA) and other Government agencies. We have even involved the Police. Our current measures are insufficient and not working. I hope we can move on and try new measures.

My residents and I are mindful that these are public spaces. But public access is not a licence to abuse the space, or behave inconsiderately and irresponsibly. The current state of affairs is hardly building cohesive communities. Residents are stressed by the many strangers loitering around their dwelling units and creating disamenities.

In contrast, the situation at another popular HDB rooftop terrace at Pinnacle @ Duxton is much more orderly. Non-residents need to register and pay a $6 fee to access the 50th storey rooftop via a turnstile gantry. Visitor numbers are limited to 200 per day. During the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pinnacle @ Duxton rooftop was closed to visitors.

I earnestly appeal for similar preventive measures to ensure the orderly management of public access to all other HDB sky gardens all over Singapore. Residents are not against public access. They just want measures to enable them to live normally and peacefully, which most HDB residents do everywhere. The welfare of these residents matters. The current system is not allowing this, and we have to implement measures to ensure security and crowd control to reduce disamenities.

HDB sky gardens are here to stay, and we will expect to see more of such beautiful features in future developments. But the need to share these public spaces in a responsible manner is equally important as well. I hope we can all work together towards a more sustainable set of solutions together.

Mdm Deputy Speaker, I thank Ms Joan Pereira for passionately voicing the concerns of her residents and sharing her views on how we can better manage common spaces in public housing estates.

HDB estates are designed to be open and inclusive and to foster community bonding. In line with this philosophy, HDB estates are not gated and remain accessible not just to residents but also members of the public. We also design community gardens, void decks and other community spaces in our estates to foster interactions. Such spaces are, as a matter of policy, kept open and accessible to all. It is one of the distinctive differences between public and private housing.

In the past decade, sky gardens have been introduced to newer estates. They function as a refuge floor for fire protection in residential blocks above 40 storeys and provide skyrise greenery. Sky gardens may include additional facilities, such as fitness corners and sheltered seating areas for people to exercise together, chit chat or gather as a community. While they are located above ground, they are, in essence, similar to other common spaces in public housing estates.

I understand the Member's concerns about how some members of the public have been treating the sky gardens as an attraction. From a policy perspective, HDB cannot treat sky gardens as exclusive enclosed spaces. At the same time, we acknowledge that sky gardens are not identical in nature to the ground-level open parks and green spaces that we see in many HDB estates. Because of their elevation and the views that they command, sky gardens might attract visitors who would not go out of their way to visit ground-level HDB parks. And because sky gardens can only be accessed via lifts, visitors will end up sharing these lifts with residents. This is different from ground-level HDB parks that often have multiple points of access. Thus, if the sky gardens attract an unusual volume of visitors during peak times, even residents who do not use the sky gardens regularly might feel inconvenienced by crowding in lifts or at the lift lobbies.

What we are able to do is to assist the Town Councils and the local grassroots in signalling to visitors that sky gardens, while open in nature, are residential amenities and not domestic tourist attractions. Visitors should not forget that residents live very near the sky gardens, and/or behave in an inconsiderate and irresponsible manner, such as making loud noises, smoking or littering. We do not condone this.

Therefore, HDB has been actively working with Town Councils and various Government agencies to implement measures targeted at addressing these disamenities that bring inconvenience and stress to residents. In 2016, a task force was established to manage crowds at the respective sky gardens on the eve of festivities. HDB is a member of this task force, focused at SkyVille and SkyTerrace, along with the Residents' Committee, Tanjong Pagar Town Council, Singapore Police Force (SPF), as well as NEA.

To address residents' feedback following the larger-than-expected turnout observed at SkyVille on New Year's Eve 2020, the task force ramped up its surveillance and regulation of the sky gardens by stepping up its patrols, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. This is on top of increased SPF patrols and NEA's own patrols targeted at smoking and littering offences. More signages and CCTV cameras were installed as well.

HDB had also conducted special joint operations with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), NEA and Dawson Residents' Committee, to address feedback on the non-compliance of COVID-19 safe management measures (SMMs) at the sky gardens.

From September to November 2021, the team issued advisories to members of the public on the proper wearing of masks, observing safe distancing and keeping to group size limits. For more serious breaches, HDB issued Notices of Composition (NOC) to offenders.

These operations have been effective. Overall, members of the public complied with the SMMs after receiving the advisories. Apart from the isolated incidents, the sky gardens were relatively quiet, with no breaches of group size limits and no serious or deliberate non-compliance of SMMs observed. Crowds also reduced steadily, from about 80 at its peak to 30 towards the end of November 2021.

On New Year's Eve 2021, the sky gardens at SkyVille were closed from 10 pm. The task force observed minimal crowds and SMMs were not breached. Groups readily dispersed and left the premises upon being advised by the task force. Since then, the sky gardens have been closed nightly, with no access permitted after 10 pm. Notices have been placed around the sky gardens with the help of Tanjong Pagar Town Council.

Since New Year's Eve 2020, HDB's on-site inspections have shown that the number of visitors to the sky gardens has declined significantly and large gatherings are uncommon, with users generally cleaning up after themselves and behaving in an orderly manner. Thus far, HDB has not received any recent feedback from residents pertaining to disamenities on sky gardens.

Even though the situation on the ground appears to have stabilised, we agree with the need for constant surveillance and vigilance, through the use of signages and CCTV cameras to warn visitors and deter errant behaviour.

Similar to the sky garden at SkyVille, all skyrise gardens and terraces in other HDB projects remain open to all. The Member raised the case of Pinnacle @ Duxton, where access to its 50th storey sky bridge is chargeable and gated for non-residents. The Pinnacle @ Duxton was an exception. It was assessed at the project design stage then, that there was a need to limit access to its sky bridges in view of various factors, such as the development's central location, its iconic status as the tallest HDB residential building in Singapore, as well as the novelty of the panoramic city views on offer.

Mdm Deputy Speaker, as far as possible, we would want to preserve the open, inclusive and shared nature of HDB estates. During my visit to one of these sky gardens, I was heartened to hear Ms Pereira explain that her residents are not asking for or expecting zero visitors to the sky gardens. What they want is for the disamenities to be managed and for daily living not to be disrupted.

This is a reasonable expectation and, in fact, similar to resident expectations of how ground-level HDB parks are managed. Ground-level HDB parks might also attract littering, loitering or noisy congregations from time to time, but these issues are, by and large, addressable through the advice and action on the part of agencies.

HDB will continue to work with the Member and agencies, such as Town Councils and NEA to monitor the situation and take action to minimise any disamenities. In particular, we appreciate the efforts expended by the Member and her ground volunteers. We will also take in her feedback and study new ways to design sky gardens better in the future, to pre-empt disamenities, while keeping them open and inclusive.

Notwithstanding the improvement seen on New Year's Eve 2021 and throughout 2022, I understand the Member is concerned about whether the crowding seen on New Year's Eve 2020 will recur. I will be glad to join her again in monitoring the sky gardens under her charge during the upcoming year-end festive period.

I thank Ms Joan Pereira again for the opportunity to respond to her ideas and set out the Ministry if National Development (MND)'s and HDB's approach to this topic. Creating a quality living environment requires everyone to play their part. I hope that as a society, we can be considerate and kind to one another, and make our HDB estates an icon of gracious, inclusive and harmonious living.