Singapore, democracy, and housing

Keeping on today's Asian theme, I noticed the Singaporean election result last week gave the PAP (should be PGP - Permanent Governing Party) a lower than usual 61.2% of the vote.  Now that sounds more like a democracy - although I see that it still meant it got 83 out of 93 seats.   And I see that it has had similar vote just above 60% a couple of times before.   Hmm.  Is this another stupid first past the post system?  Yes, yes it is.  (The link points to other aspects of the Singaporean system that work in favour of the PAP.) 

Anyway, as I have said before, if you watch CNA a lot, you can't help but be impressed by the apparent technocratic and social reasonableness of the current bunch of governing PAP politicians.   I'd be inclined to give up on a more representative form of democracy too if I felt it meant government in the hands of such competent sounding people.   Instead, we get stuck with Smarmo (with the occasional fart smell of Mini Trump), who unfortunately is getting better approval ratings than he deserves due to his at least appearing to be on a more-or-less reasonable track regarding COVID-19.  

Put me down as someone who is never likely to give him an overall tick of approval - Labor would not have handled COVID-19 substantially differently, and we might at least have something vaguely resembling Ministerial accountability under them. 

But - back to Singapore.  I was reading this history of their public housing success, and learnt a few things:

While the government’s action helped solve the housing crisis, it was the decision to begin offering subsidized flats for sale in 1964 that laid the foundation for Singapore’s real-estate success. Under its “Home Ownership for the People Scheme” around 2,000 two- and three-bedroom apartments were sold to lower-middle-income citizens in a new estate in the district of Queenstown for as little as S$4,900 each. Like most HDB sales, they were offered on a 99-year lease and buyers were forbidden from reselling the property for at least five years.

Once that period finished, owners of flats in prestigious complexes stood to make a sizeable profit. Even in those venerable blocks in Queenstown, an unmodernized two-bedroom unit can now sell for around S$220,000, with only 43 years left on the lease. In 2016, the total resale value of Singapore’s HDB apartments was estimated to be more than S$400 billion.

The blocks were built in neighborhood clusters – miniature new towns with playgrounds, food centers and local shops. The larger ones, like Queenstown, had a health clinic, a community center and a library. And like most things in Singapore’s meticulously planned economy, the management of the estates was integrated into policies that included everything from the design of the city’s mass transit system to racial integration.

In a policy that began in 1989, HDB blocks require minimum levels of occupancy of each of the main ethnic groups in the city — Chinese, Malay and Indian — to prevent the formation of “racial enclaves.” The government continues to implement what one senior minister once called the “most intrusive social policy in Singapore” to encourage social harmony.

I find that kind of social engineering very appealing - when it works, anyway.

The government makes sure the blocks are well maintained:

While many governments have focused public housing programs on the poorest members of society—often allowing the austere concrete blocks to deteriorate into urban slums—Singapore recognized that these homes represented the biggest stake its citizens had in the prosperity of the country. The HDB not only maintained its buildings and grounds carefully, but periodically upgraded estates with new elevators, walkways and facelifts.

And how is this for a bit of "that's not how government is supposed to work!" PAP policy:

The potential financial gain from the value of the flats became so important to the nation’s citizens that it was used as a political tool, with the ruling People’s Action Party in the 1980s announcing that it would prioritize maintenance of estates in constituencies that elected a PAP member. The party has never lost a general election.

I don't think I had heard this before - but residents now get built in bomb shelters too!:

As the illustrated floor plan above shows, many have a store room, which, in all apartments built since 1996, has become a bomb shelter with reinforced concrete walls and a massive steel door to protect the occupants in case the Republic is attacked.

Gee. 

Anyway,  I can't wait to go back to Disneyland with the Death Penalty, but there is the matter of a certain coronavirus stuffing up my plans.