Zia is a 42-year old divorcee with five children. Four of the younger ones are in school whilst her eldest son is due to complete his National Service this year. As a Patient Service Assistant at a health care centre, she earns a gross income of $1500 a month. After deductions, she takes home approximately $1100.
Over the last twenty years that Zia and her ex-husband were together, they bought and sold four flats. The first two bought directly from the HDB were a four-room and then a five-room. The third and fourth were four-room flats from the open market. The last one was sold because of their separation. She tells The Online Citizen (TOC) that she did not receive any proceeds from the sale of her flats from her husband.
Following the divorce, she and her five children lived with her mother for more than three years, until her mother decided to sell the three-room flat at the end of 2008.
Zia then applied for HDB’s Public Rental Scheme as the eligibility conditions seemed to apply to her. She is a Singapore Citizen. She earns less than $1500 per month. Her children are legally under her custody. Her last flat was sold more than 30 months ago. And she does not currently “own nor have an interest in any property”, as stipulated by the HDB’s rules.
However, her application was flatly rejected – because she failed to meet one condition. According to the list of criteria, applicants of the scheme face debarment if they had previously owned and sold two or more direct-purchased flats from the HDB. She is now permanently disqualified.
HDB Says Not Their Problem
The options offered to her by the HDB were to either rent from the open market or to take out a bank loan to buy a flat, both of which are obvious impossibilities. Zia made an appeal to the HDB to exercise some flexibility with regards to the regulation, reasoning that as a single mother with five children and a net salary of $1100, she could never afford to rent from the open market nor borrow from the bank. The response from the HDB officer in charge of her case was, “Your predicament is not my problem”.
Angered but undaunted, Zia made a second appeal, this time to a manager. However, she was turned down again. This was in early 2009 when the HDB’s interim rental housing measure was first announced. So the manager offered Zia a three-room flat at a monthly rent of $300 with the tenancy agreement to be reviewed bi-annually. Along with the flat, Bernard also offered Zia, a secondary school dropout, a piece of advice: seek a better paying job since, he said, she “sounds educated” – referring to her good command of English.
A year and two reviews later, Zia was recently informed that her rent will be raised to $420 in accordance with interim housing policies.
Fed up, Zia enlisted the help of The Online Citizen a month ago, which wrote to the HDB with a list of questions, among which were:
(a) Does the HDB have a long-term solution for single, low–income families like which cannot rent from the HDB, and which also cannot afford to rent from the open market?
(b) What is the rationale for the increase in rental for the interim housing when the lease is extended?
(c) What is the action that HDB would take if the person is unable to find affordable housing once the lease on the interim housing expires?
TOC has yet to receive any replies from the HDB..
Zia never expected the consequences of her divorce to last this long. “Who am I going to blame? I didn’t ask to be divorced. I am independent, I work very hard. I just need extra help. They didn’t help just because of their policies. The government only will help me when I become a destitute.”
Zia is not the only ‘victim’ of the HDB’s inflexible application of rules and regulations.
Idah’s Story
Idah is another single mother with two children. Her daughter is pursuing her Masters degree, and her youngest son, in Primary 5.
Since her divorce seven years ago, Idah has been renting a two-room flat from the HDB. Up until last month, her clerical job at the People’s Association earns her a gross salary of $2000. But Idah, who started working at a young age, has sufficient CPF to buy over her current rental flat. Her request to do so was declined as these flats are specifically for rental, the HDB told her. Her only alternative was to purchase a three-room flat from the HDB as anything from the open market was beyond her means. This, however, would require her to take out a small HDB Concessionary Loan. But she was turned down when she applied for it. Based on Condition (c) of the ‘Who Can Apply’ list of rules, Idah is ineligible as she and her ex-husband had been granted two similar loans before.
Things are coming full circle for Idah. Until recently, her rent was $250 a month. With her income, she could hardly keep up with rent payments, and ended up accumulating $1,700 in arrears. She was recently served a “Notice to Quit” and told to clear out of the flat by the end of this month. To top it off, the renewal of her latest tenancy agreement was accompanied with a $100 rental increase to $350, as her recent $65 pay rise to $2065 means that she now falls under another bracket of the rental scheme.
Her several written appeals to the HDB to reconsider her loan application were futile. Idah then decided to seek help from her Citizens’ Consultative Committee Chairman, Mr Chia Ngiang Hong. After hearing her out, Mr Chia’s first words were, “You’re rich” – in reference to her $2000 salary, Idah tells TOC He went on further to say that in Chinese culture, the older child would sacrifice for the younger siblings. So Idah’s daughter should have worked to help the family out instead of pursuing a Masters’ degree.
Since then, Idah has had to terminate her fixed phone line to cut back on expenditures. She also works as a helper at a food stall during the weekends to earn some extra cash. When I last spoke with her, she was recovering from an asthma attack brought on by stress due to her housing problems.
Zia, on the other hand, is at her wits’ end. “[For now] we may have a roof but it’s still a question mark because”, she says, “I don’t know when they can take it away from me”. She feels the government is penalising her for what happened in her marriage.
By Yong Pagit
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We need a more compassionate society and not one run like a machine with no mercy.
All of you are missing the point and misjudge idah. To what i read idah gross is $2,000 and take home is about $1,500. Who the hell the CCC chairmen think he is. That does not include her rental $350, town council, water bill and left bearly $800, for her and also her 11 year old boy. Idah daughter is NOT a chinese, if she is she will get all the help from all the organisation and give encouragement to finished the masters and maybe continue PHD. Why are we pinalising this single parents who are doing well in broughting up the children. NOT all single parents can be like idah or Zia courage to bring up 5 children. They either end up in welfare homes. Hang on idah let your daughter finished her masters, who knows she will be somebody someday. Write to HDB to pay your bills in instalment. Take care of your health idah
MCYS MINISTER SHOULD BE INCHARGE OF HDB RENTAL FLATS
HDB RENTAL FLATS HAS BECOME A COMMUNITY SOCIAL [MCYS] ISSUE,
not a housing [HDB] issue.
===========
Quote -
No child in S’pore will be left without a home, says Dr Balakrishnan
http://app.reach.gov.sg/reach/YourSay/YourDiscussionCorner/tabid/117/ptid/414/page/1/totrecs/15/threadid/3206/forumtype/posts/Default.aspx
” At a forum organised by REACH, the government’s online feedback portal, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, said:
“………..if you were a poor person, anywhere on this planet, Singapore is the one place where you will have a roof over your head, ……..”
http://zh.sgforums.com/forums/10/topics/394784?page=1
SO IS THE MINISTER LYING OR DRUNK??????????
============
quote-
MCYS GOT DELIVER 3 MEALS A DAY TO FEED THE POOR IN SINGAPORE?????
MCYS MINISTER SAID SO, BUT CANT FIND ANY DETAILS ON MCYS WEBSITE.
http://zh.sgforums.com/forums/10/topics/394784?page=1
Poor? Government “will deliver meals to you
At a forum organised by REACH, the government’s online feedback portal, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, said:
“If you were a poor person, anywhere on this planet, Singapore is the one place ………, where you will have food on the table. Even if you can’t afford it, we will have meals delivered to you.” ”
SO IS THE MINISTER LYING OR DRUNK??????????
============quote-MCYS GOT DELIVER 3 MEALS A DAY TO FEED THE POOR IN SINGAPORE?????
MCYS MINISTER SAID SO, BUT CANT FIND ANY DETAILS ON MCYS WEBSITE.
http://zh.sgforums.com/forums/10/topics/394784?page=1Poor? Government “will deliver meals to you
At a forum organised by REACH, the government’s online feedback portal, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, said:
“If you were a poor person, anywhere on this planet, Singapore is the one place ………, where you will have food on the table. Even if you can’t afford it, we will have meals delivered to you.” ”
PAP approach – to family values – keep family intact so that they will pay for the social security instead of social security being the responsibility of the government; relatives are human capital that individuals tap into in times of needs – individual initiative to force government to look into individual case-by-case situation is asking for a welfare state; divorce – oh, a no, no, family values remember? High divorce rates among some? Homelessness among some? Must be bad genes. No, bad culture. Hey, homeless, why tell your stories to these guys unless they give you their words to stand by you! When they use your stories, tell them that you are a unique individual and not a representation of some ‘imagined’ type that they can use to wag or to praise.
Correction:
…to whack or to praise.
For all the postings on the minister being drunk (is that a deliberate caricature or an unconscious slip, the PAP-way?)- we already know that he is a good-for-nothing self-serving *******; what we want to know is how different are the peppy-types going to be? Clean PAP out of your own self and then present your case, we will listen.
MCYS MINISTER SHOULD BE INCHARGE OF HDB RENTAL FLATS
-
HDB RENTAL FLATS HAS BECOME A COMMUNITY SOCIAL [MCYS] ISSUE,
not a housing [HDB] issue.
-
===========
Quote -
No child in S’pore will be left without a home, says Dr Balakrishnan
http://app.reach.gov.sg/reach/YourSay/YourDiscussionCorner/tabid/117/ptid/414/page/1/totrecs/15/threadid/3206/forumtype/posts/Default.aspx
-
” At a forum organised by REACH, the government’s online feedback portal, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, said:
“………..if you were a poor person, anywhere on this planet, Singapore is the one place where you will have a roof over your head, ……..”
http://zh.sgforums.com/forums/10/topics/394784?page=1
MCYS MINISTER SHOULD BE INCHARGE OF HDB RENTAL FLATS-HDB RENTAL FLATS HAS BECOME A COMMUNITY SOCIAL [MCYS] ISSUE,not a housing [HDB] issue.-===========Quote -
No child in S’pore will be left without a home, says Dr Balakrishnanhttp://app.reach.gov.sg/reach/YourSay/YourDiscussionCorner/tabid/117/ptid/414/page/1/totrecs/15/threadid/3206/forumtype/posts/Default.aspx-” At a forum organised by REACH, the government’s online feedback portal, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, said:“………..if you were a poor person, anywhere on this planet, Singapore is the one place where you will have a roof over your head, ……..”http://zh.sgforums.com/forums/10/topics/394784?page=1
BUT AFTER READING THE BELOW , I PUT MCYS MINISTER IN THE ‘TALK COCK’ N ‘JUST TALK AS USUAL’ CATEGORIES.
-.
——–
[QUOTE]
SO IS THE MINISTER LYING OR DRUNK??????????
============
MCYS GOT DELIVER 3 MEALS A DAY TO FEED THE POOR IN SINGAPORE?????
-.
MCYS MINISTER SAID SO, BUT CANT FIND ANY DETAILS ON MCYS WEBSITE.
-.
http://zh.sgforums.com/forums/10/topics/394784?page=1
-.
Poor? Government “will deliver meals to you
-.
At a forum organised by REACH, the government’s online feedback portal, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, said:
-.
“If you were a poor person, anywhere on this planet, Singapore is the one place ………, where you will have food on the table. Even if you can’t afford it, we will have meals delivered to you.” ”
@MCYS MINISTER SHOULD BE INCHARGE OF HDB RENTAL FLATS
Exactly my point – PAP style responses when you cant given an original response.
While Zia deserves some pity for her current predicament, I’m rather bemused by Idah’s pleas for help.
If the daughter is currently studying for a master’s, then the lady probably has a basic degree. In that case, shouldn’t the daughter be out getting a job if money is really of utmost importance?
Most people either do their master’s on a part-time basis or put it off till a later date. So what makes Idah’s daughter so special? If her family is in dire straits, then she should make sure where her priorities lie. A master’s degree is not a necessity or prerequiste to landing a decent job in Singapore.
I would also like to comment that Chia Ngiang Hong is an insensitive prick for bringing in a cultural argument. His comment reeks of cultural superiority but I’m really not surprised to hear that coming from someone associated with the regime.
The daughter probably couldn’t get a job with her basic degree – that’s why she is studying for her masters. Understand?
alex 4 September 2009
to all my malay friends,
be on the bright side,
the only way to win and stay is make use of the education system in spore
available to you. ensure your children study hard and pass their exams.
best wishes to my malay friends.
you are censoring my messages.
You guys are just big bullies! You dont want people like us to express our real opinions, censor us and you keep filling this discussion blog with this shit:
‘To MCYS MINISTER DR VIVIAN B ALASKRISNAN’
Now, you convince me, you are a bigger shit taking us for a ride. No vote from me, my family, my extended, extended family, all my friends and their friends and families. Treat us like dogs, we treat you like how we treat PAP.
Hi rina, remember? four legs good, two legs better?
sure sounds like that to me susan. Thanks.
Please do not juxtapose a picture of a tent to these two “sob” stories because they are not the typical have nots or real destitute down and outs.
Sold 4 HDB apartments and want to grumble some more. What the heck. Can’t she just stay put and not be an almost property speculator? I have stayed in my flat for the last 20 years and we are doing fine thank you.
Pursuing a masters degree? I would also like to do a PhD but that would mean doing it full time for two years and have to resign my my job so who is going to take care of my family. What the heck, I am resigning anyway. If I become another hard luck story just write to TOC and sob sob sob.
Be practical fellas. Not every sob story is the whole story.
The whole story is the PAP scumbag story. Thank you scumbag ed for being a scumbag. We all beleive that we should work our lives out, put living on hold, gather whatever assets we can and trust the market to make us rich. Recipe for making scumbags out of us? lol!!!!
PAP gives you this choice – scumbag or not-scumbag – choose have a live or a job; choose have a live or a roof; choose have a live or a family; choose have a live or an asset…da da da da da di di di da…peppy, I think I prefer you. This reverse psycho works!!!!
you censor my message!!!!!!! TOC is fascist!!!
@scumbagfollower. No, they put back yours sally and censor mine instead because they dont want me to criticise scumbag ed. scumbag ed exposes the mentality promoted here -fascist.
no, they censored both our messages – harmless messages – just points of view to say that we dont asgree with scumbag ed and we cant say it here on TOC. sad. sad. sad. censorship freeks talk about alternative spaces?
since when does pursuing a masters degree become scumbaggish in Singapore? since the new era? gives me the shivers. may be just the wrong skin colour.
we will post all censored opinions on other blogs together with the context of the the discussion.
put back my earlier post!
We are the watchdogs against bigotry, bullies and the reincarnation and repackaging of PAP. We want change, but real change. We are tired of being used this way and that way.
The truth is not so pleasant huh?
when you give s sensible posting, TOC censors. If you write rubbish and futile bickering, they post.
Our society is rotten at its very core. Alot of hidden presumptions that are used but not explicitly stated. Unless we address this in open discussion, there is no help for us even if we change PAP. PAP did not create this rot, they merely perpetuate it because it gives them advantage. If you have social policies that is determined by market principles, of course you generate greed. People are going to come to you and try to make the most profit out of what little you provide. Even with HDB it becomes a competition. Look at how we talk – if I can live in one HDB flat for 20 years, why not you kind of talk. As far as I can see, in Singapore, you are supposed to look at your house as your asset, not as your social security. This was and still is how a ‘house’ is sold to us in Singapore. You bombard people with this belief and you chide them when they act this belief out by speculating. Look at how a purchase is often portrayed in terms of its rental potentials, the price of location, the future value…Except when you are poor – once you pay for your house, it is not yours to do what you want with it. You sell it once, you are careless. You sell it twice, you are a loser. You sell it three times, you are greedy. You sell it again, you should be damned – and the part of society that says, ‘wait a minute, lets re-evaluate our first principles’ goes down with you – thus, the opposition. Result – we think we, the people are competing with and the enemy of one another. This is where I think political correctness does not help. We merely keep our ghosts hidden. Speak up the way you feel, we discuss when we do not agree. I would also like to thank TOC for creating this opportunity, despite all the frustrations I have had with this discussion space. We are moving on though – this is not our space. Good luck!!!!
OK. can. You want Greed? You must also have the brains lah. You think wat? Tikkam, tikkam issit?
Idah and Zia , the world is a cruel place people who are not in your place will give you all the negative words and statements , in life at time’s we do make mistake’s along the way and i fully understand that you ladies are trying hard to survive and do your best , don’t mind all the negative words just be strong and move on any you are not asking to be pitied just a helping hand to move on with your life’s …i just wonder if some of you in this forum who are so negative towards this two ladies would turn a blind eye if its happen to one of your own family …this people are not beggars shame on you people cause this ladies have the guts to pick their life’s and move on …