HDB Rental Flat Applicants

Mdm Speaker, there are 48,200 households living in HDB rental flats. Their average length of stay is 11 years.

We help all low-income families, including HDB rental tenants, own their homes. New HDB 2-room flats are priced affordably, with a significant market discount. In addition, first-timer low-income households can receive the Additional CPF Housing Grant and the Special CPF Housing Grant of up to $60,000. With these grants, they can buy a 2-room flat for as little as $16,000 in the latest Build-To-Order (BTO) launch. Public rental tenants also enjoy priority allocation of 5% of new 2-room and 3-room flats in BTO or Sale of Balance Flats exercises. In 2011 and 2012, 630 rental tenants progressed to own homes.

There are 1,900 registered applicants waiting to be allocated a rental flat. Since 2011, HDB has received 23,900 applications and 13,700 were not eligible. Most of them could afford to purchase a small flat or had family support. We have to turn down their applications, so that we can focus our help for the truly needy. Where there are genuine hardship cases, HDB does exercise flexibility, even if they do not fulfil the eligibility criteria.

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HDB works closely with MSF and other social agencies like the Community Development Councils, the Social Service Offices and Family Service Centres to understand the challenges facing low-income and vulnerable families. We find that housing difficulties typically occur as a result of underlying socio-economic problems, such as unstable employment, family conflicts and marital problems. HDB thus works closely with these social agencies to complement housing assistance with other forms of social support, including employment assistance and training.

Madam, I thank the Minister of State for his reply. Given the rising cost of renting a unit from the open market, can HDB consider using an affordability index that takes into account the applicants' gross family income and market rental prices to assess applicants' ability to get suitable accommodation for themselves?

Madam, affordability is also dependent on the family's capability in budgeting their income and expenditure. We try to help them in various ways: first, we do financial counselling for the families, especially on how they manage their expenses, and depending on the number of children they may have. The current pricing or fees for rental flats are already heavily subsidised. We try to allocate them to the truly needy. We do have criteria in place, for example, the household income criterion. But we do take into consideration the number of children in the family. As far as possible, we have a broad guideline in relation to the criteria that we put in place for families who are eligible for rental flats, but beyond that, we look at individual cases and try to help them as far as possible to be allocated rental flats when they really, truly need them.

Mdm Speaker, I wish to ask the Minister of State what is the current stock of balance rental flats, that is, the on-going balance stock of rental flats. I do see that some blocks still have empty units of rental flats. And so, in view of the high demand for rental flats, how can the Ministry expeditiously allocate these flats out?

Madam, as I have mentioned earlier, we have a stock of 50,000 rental flats, of which 48,200 have been allocated. We have about 1,300 rental flats that are awaiting allocation. It is an on-going number because there are rental flats that are returned to us when families move out. Right now, we are looking at allocating the 1,300 flats I mentioned. The speed at which we can allocate the flats really depends on the availability of those flats and the readiness of those flats. Sometimes, yes, as the Member

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mentioned, we see empty flats available, but it does not mean that they are not being allocated. They are being allocated, but sometimes, flats are affected by the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP) quotas. But we try to allocate to those families who are on the queue as soon as we can. We have reduced the duration or the waiting time in the queue from 21 months to the current average of seven and a half months.

Thank you, Mdm Speaker. I have a question for the Minister of State on rental flats. I understand that previously the Minister for National Development had announced that the plan was for 57,000 rental flats to come on stream. Can I just confirm when the additional 7,000 will be available?

In fact, we plan to ramp up supply for rental flats up to 60,000 by 2017. We have reached the level of 57,000 rental flats and we are moving upwards to enhance the number to 60,000 by 2017.