Families in Transition: Navigating Temporary Housing in Singapore

While home-seekers go through strict means testing to ascertain whether they truly deserve public rental housing, there continues to be a limited supply, resulting in a waiting list that can last for months. In 2013, the waiting list for rental flats was 1,900 applicants long, with an average wait of 7.5 months per unit, according to the Ministry of National Development. Based on the accounts of our clients in AFYS, this waiting period varies greatly depending on the availability of rental flats, as well as each applicant’s efforts to prove the urgency and severity of their case.

Alternative Housing, but Not Alternative Homes

Those who do not qualify for the public rental flats would have to consider renting on the open market or staying under the interim rental housing scheme. Among them are those who have sold their flats out of desperation due to financial hardship, or after a divorce. While the more affordable alternative to home ownership is public rental housing, sellers of HDB flats have to wait for 30 months before they can apply for a rental flat, based on HDB’s criteria.

Presently, there are three government-funded shelters that allow families to co-share a flat for a maximum of six months, at a minimum fee of $50 per month. Vacancies in the shelters are reserved for those who have been denied all other options and require urgent housing assistance. Meanwhile, those who do not qualify for the shelters, or cannot wait for a vacancy to be made available, can apply for HDB’s interim rental housing scheme – where they can get a room for a few hundred dollars a month, after splitting the flat’s rental fees between two co-sharing families. Finally, a family may also rent a room from the open market, should they require urgent accommodation. However, the cost of renting a single room from the open market is considered to be too steep for many.

Regardless of whether a low-income family is staying in an interim rental flat, a shelter, or even a room rented from the open market, they tend to be subjected to immense challenges in the form of financial insecurity, and a lack of privacy and security. This is due to the arrangement that requires them to co-share a 3-room or 4-room flat with another family. The challenges of living with a co-tenant are complex and their implications go beyond clashes of values and interests between co-tenants. As the availability of these alternative forms of housing remains limited, families have little say over who they end up sharing a home with.

Apart from the less-than-ideal living conditions, families also face a lot of anxiety as they navigate through various systems and try to chart out their next steps towards home ownership. Evidently, securing a home requires more than just asking for help. Many of our clients in AFYS who have gone through periods of homelessness have had to show great perseverance in facing rejections for their applications for public rental housing, as well as in going through rounds of appeals through different organisations.

A Mother's Struggle

Sarah (not her real name), an AFYS client, single mother and sole breadwinner to three children, only managed to secure her own public rental flat after almost four years. Following her divorce in 2013, she and her husband sold their 4-room HDB flat and shared an equal portion of the sales proceeds. Due to the 30-month debarment period, she could not apply for a public rental flat and moved into her parents’ 1-room rental flat, where she lived with her children and an adult relative, for 3.5 years. Living in close quarters with six people meant that everyone slept in the same place they cooked, ate, studied, played and watched TV. It also meant that recurrent arguments had to be painfully swallowed as part of the price to pay for shelter.

When the 30-month debarment period ended, Sarah applied for a public rental flat only to face rejection as she was told that she had enough savings in her CPF account to apply for a Build-To-Order (BTO) flat. However, her income of $1,200, as well as her part-time employment status at the time, made her have doubts about qualifying for the HDB loan. Nonetheless, Sarah decided to apply anyway, seeing that her application for a public rental flat had already been rejected.

While waiting for the results of her HDB Loan Eligibility (HLE) application, Sarah continued to stay at her parents’ home. On weekdays, Sarah worked part-time at a hospital while on weekends, she volunteered with a charity organisation. Six months after her application, Sarah received a letter of rejection. Wasting no time, she applied, once again, for a public rental flat. Once more, her application was rejected. After realising that she needed a more convincing voice, she shared her plight with her social worker from the Family Service Centre (FSC) and her constituency’s Member of Parliament (MP) and got them to write an appeal letter to HDB.

She was rejected for the third time and was advised to rent a room on the open market. As Sarah was still struggling with her finances, this was not an option. She applied to the public rental housing scheme for the fourth time. Eventually, Sarah was forced to leave her parents’ home, after reaching a breaking point in one of her many heated arguments with her relative. Her FSC social worker then referred her to a shelter nearby where she resided with her children and her new co-tenants – a family of five.

While living in the shelter, Sarah was informed that her application had finally been accepted, but that she had to wait 4 to 6 months before moving into her flat. It took less than a month for the family to find their new life intolerable.

Sarah’s children could no longer play or make noise at home as children do, without disturbing their co-tenants. As her co-tenants had moved in first, they assumed a greater sense of ownership in the house, treating it “as if it were theirs”. Sarah had to cook before her co-tenants returned home from work or school, and then her family either retreated into their room or went out to spend the night at her friend’s place nearby. Soon, her eldest son started having “meltdowns”, like he did right after her divorce and Sarah started falling sick easily, to the point that she could not go to work. She remembers this as the most physically and emotionally tiring period of her life.

Desperate but undefeated, Sarah sought help from her FSC and the charity organisation that she was volunteering with. The two organisations worked together in writing a letter of appeal to HDB, requesting for her waiting period to be shortened, and that she get a place close to her parents’ home.

After a month in the shelter, Sarah received a call from HDB. Finally, she had a home.

Homelessness in Singapore

According to the European Typology on Homelessness and Housing Exclusion or ETHOS, which was developed by the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) and the European Observatory on Homelessness, a home has three domains: the physical, social and legal. The physical domain refers to an individual’s ability to have ample space and exclusive ownership of it; the social domain refers to an individual’s ability to have privacy, and enjoy relationships with others; while the legal domain refers to one’s legal right to occupy the space.

Based on this framework, families living in transitional housing such as shelters and interim rental flats can be considered to be homeless, as they suffer from a lack of space and privacy for them to carry out their daily activities. While this is not the common understanding of homelessness in Singapore, it is important to acknowledge such a definition in trying to understand the vulnerable state of families living in these temporary arrangements.

Through Sarah’s story, we see that homelessness is more than just a lack of accommodation, and that it takes grit and sheer determination for families such as hers to survive. On top of these spatial and environmental disadvantages, the complexity of the procedures involved in securing a proper home truly demands the support of social workers as well as other organisations that provide avenues for empowerment for the homeless.

In the words of American novelist Toni Morrison, “if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have power, then your job is to empower somebody else”. It is time that the rest of us consider what we can do to ensure that the voices and aspirations of the homeless do not get drowned out by the sound of a nation’s paper chase.