[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/our-home-how-hdb-shapes-the-families-it-wants\/#NewsArticle","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/our-home-how-hdb-shapes-the-families-it-wants\/","headline":"Our Home: How HDB Shapes the Families it Wants","name":"Our Home: How HDB Shapes the Families it Wants","description":"When she turned 30 years old, Samantha Tan decided it was time to move out of her childhood home. This is a perfectly ordinary thing to do in many other parts of the world: setting up your own home when you come of age is a common rite of passage. But this is land-scarce Singapore, […]","datePublished":"2021-02-24","dateModified":"2022-04-15","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/kellynn-wee\/#Person","name":"Kellynn Wee","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/kellynn-wee\/","identifier":238,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c4206740f77ee610cee5f48fa7b2adc2b1dd5fdd5018d5725f6addc92a232c2?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c4206740f77ee610cee5f48fa7b2adc2b1dd5fdd5018d5725f6addc92a232c2?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"TheHomeGround Asia","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","width":640,"height":640}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/culture_housing_1.png","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/culture_housing_1.png","height":616,"width":1280},"url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/our-home-how-hdb-shapes-the-families-it-wants\/","about":["Community","Local","Singapore"],"wordCount":2343,"articleBody":"When she turned 30 years old, Samantha Tan decided it was time to move out of her childhood home. This is a perfectly ordinary thing to do in many other parts of the world: setting up your own home when you come of age is a common rite of passage.But this is land-scarce Singapore, where affordable public housing is allocated to citizens through a lottery that requires you to be a straight married couple to be eligible to participate. The choice to privately rent a place of your own \u2013 a decision many equate to throwing money down the drain \u2013 can be a momentous one.Yet, despite the hit to her finances and a sense of guilt for moving out of her parents\u2019 home, Samantha ploughed ahead.\u201cI wanted to push myself to leave my comfort zone,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can never really grow as an individual if you\u2019re always cocooned in a safe and protective environment.\u201dHousing for a particular kind of familyTo buy a Housing Development Board (HDB) flat, you have to be a particular kind of family. Like a good base recipe for bread or soup, there are ingredients that are must-adds: you begin with a husband and a wife, and then perhaps toss parents or children into the mix. If you\u2019re single, then you have to wait until you\u2019re 35 years of age before you can apply for a HDB flat.Yet in societies like ours, marriage is a decision we make later and later in life, particularly for women. The median age at the time of first marriage in Singapore was 28.8 years old for women in 2019, slowly creeping up from 27.7 back in 2010, while the median age of men who tied the knot for the first time has stayed largely the same (30-30.4).This is likely due to women becoming increasingly educated and more active in the workforce, but perhaps we\u2019re also wising up to the fact that marriage isn\u2019t all that great for women in the first place \u2013 behavioural psychologist Paul Dolan found that married women were less happy and lived shorter lives than their unmarried counterparts.Marriage no longer has the same kind of appeal it had in the past. Our fertility rate is plummeting as people shirk the desire to have children. And not everyone in Singapore is straight or wants to get married.So how relevant is the state-sanctioned model of family today? As family sizes shrink, parents age, and extended family networks fade, people are forming new communities beyond ties of kin and blood. And this means new types of households \u2013 formed in an attempt to get around Singapore\u2019s housing policies.READ: What Do We Lose When We Stop Speaking a Language?HDB: the heteronormativity development board? In the 1960s, Singapore was overwhelmingly made up of single male migrant labourers, sparking concerns about issues of overcrowding and poor sanitation. (A glance at our migrant workers\u2019 dormitories today will show that this as a perennial problem.) The HDB was established to manage this problem, and they\u2019ve managed it spectacularly. Almost 60 years later in 2019, Singapore\u2019s home ownership rate is at 90.4 per cent, one of the highest in the world.Historically, Singapore\u2019s distribution of public housing \u2013 particularly in the political contestations of the 1960s and 1970s \u2013 has also been used to secure the stronghold of the People\u2019s Action Party. For example, sociologist Chua Beng Huat noted that the ethnic quotas that HDB put in place for each apartment block disrupted any potential for ethnically based activism or challenge to the ruling party. Geographer Natalie Oswin added that the relocation of residents in Singapore to HDB blocks significantly improved living conditions for many, but also fractured networks of communist opposition and resulted in a loss of informal economies.Public housing has also been used to perpetuate an ideal family model. Part of this was done by law \u2013 only \u2018nuclear families\u2019 could apply for housing \u2013 but part of this was also an ideological process. \u201cThe \u2018proper family\u2019 [\u2026] is central to key national narratives of modernity, progress and development,\u201d wrote Oswin.Noting that HDB archival records are open only to civil servants, Oswin found a creative way to track how HDB sought to influence and define Singapore\u2019s families: she looked at copies of HDB\u2019s in-house magazine, Our Home, which was produced and distributed to all HDB tenants between 1972 and 1989.HDB’s \u201cOur Home\u201d magazine October 1983While policies today are pro-natalist \u2013 meaning that we want families to have children in order to prop up a rapidly ageing society \u2013 the focus then was anti-natalist, as the government sought to pare down on large families, particularly large families borne by poorly educated women who came disproportionately from Malay or Indian backgrounds (see Heng and Devan 1995 for more detail).Oswin found that the magazines featured photographs of nuclear families on the cover, and that its contents were consistently focused on family size. Young couples were told that early marriage and child-bearing would create \u201cagonising marital problems\u201d and pregnancies that were \u201cprone to complications\u201d.In one issue from 1976, residents were told that large families meant that children would receive less attention: \u201cThe love and care in a large family of six to ten children must necessarily be of a different kind and quality. Out of sheer necessity, parents are likely to run their homes autocratically\u2026\u201dFamily Planning and Population BoardThe nuclear family \u2013 two parents, two children \u2013 became the norm. It was, as Oswin wrote, \u201cmost literally put into place in the nation\u2019s flats.\u201d Housing policies are part of what makes heteronormativity an accepted moral principle in Singapore.Heteronormativity is not simply a set of norms that makes heterosexuality the \u201cright\u201d thing, but particular expressions of heterosexuality seem right. This means that it\u2019s not just about being heterosexual, it\u2019s also about being heterosexual in the right way: it\u2019s also about being married, with the right number of children, in order to qualify for a home.Queer couples are explicitly excluded from this, but so are unwed, single parents and their children. While recent changes in the law have made housing more accessible to these family formations, they still do not count as a \u201cfamily nucleus\u201d and hence are not eligible for flats and housing grants. An AWARE report titled \u201cWives in Distress: Issues facing non-resident women married to Singaporean men\u201d, published in 2020, also showed how migrant women struggle to maintain ownership of their HDB flats after their spouses pass away.READ: Freedom of Speech in Singapore: What Does It Entail?Moving out and becoming a work-in-progressSamantha\u2019s decision to find a new home was partly shaped by these expectations of heteronormativity. Her move was precipitated by the ending of a long-term relationship. \u201cWe bought a house and were planning to move in together,\u201d she said. \u201cThe breakup actually triggered my thought to move out \u2013because I can\u2019t see myself living off my parents for another decade, until I am ready to settle down again.\u201cIt also made me relieved that we didn\u2019t buy public housing, because then the breakup would be so much more complicated.\u201dThe desire to stay in the \u2018right\u2019 kind of family is also powerfully felt in the sense of guilt that Samantha felt when she chose to rent a room in a shared apartment.\u201cIt almost feels like you abandoned your family,\u201d she said ruefully. \u201cAsian values. But I guess I needed to prioritise myself.\u201dAs institutions like marriage become less important in how we make meaning of our lives, the importance of what sociologist Anthony Giddens calls a \u201cbiographical narrative\u201d comes to the forefront. Instead of defining our identities in accordance to our sense of belonging to particular social groups, the growth of the individual self becomes a story we can write, a project that we can cultivate.Samantha\u2019s relationship to herself became a key part of her life. \u201cI\u2019d say my relationship to myself becomes a work-in-progress. On the one hand, I enjoy the space to figure out who I am as a person \u2013 like I started attending more yoga classes, started spinning. I enjoy quiet time reading. But on the other hand, being alone most of the time also means I need to enjoy my own company. That\u2019s something I\u2019m still getting the hang of.\u201dAn increasing demand for homes beyond the HDB marketplace has created new markets of co-living spaces, aimed at fostering new types of communities beyond the rubber-stamped nuclear family. Companies like Figment, Hmlet, Cove, and Commontown have all sprouted over the past few years, each offering stylish bedrooms with communal kitchens, lounges, work areas, and even organising social activities like yoga classes and meditation sessions.Screenshot of available housing from co-living organisation FigmentWhile this iteration of co-living appeals to the moneyed millennial and the digital nomads, co-living spaces aren\u2019t new. Intimate ties that contest the conventional family model has always been the province of the queer community, who have been finding ways to make life work even when it is difficult to attain full recognition in the eyes of society and the law.READ: What Happens When Your Self-Identity is Tied to Your PartnerCreating chosen families Studying lesbian and gay families in San Francisco in the 1980s, anthropologist Kath Weston observed that the language of love and solidarity was how queer families grounded kinship ties. Through holiday celebrations, shared pasts and offering help in crises, queer families bound together households out of sexual and non-sexual relationships, including children, friends, and lovers in flexible and dynamic family formations.For Raksha Mahtani \u2013 who founded an active Facebook group explicitly geared towards finding and offering accommodation for the queer and trans community in Singapore \u2013 Weston\u2019s findings partly echoed her experiences, too. \u201cI heard stories from older lesbians opening their houses to queer houseless friends who crashed on their couches,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve also lived with wonderful and nourishing queer and trans folks.\u201dThe Queer\/Trans Housing Singapore group has seen its members rise to the occasion when housing needs became apparent, stepping in where blood kin cannot or will not. \u201cDuring circuit breaker, someone was kicked out by their landlord and needed a place on urgent notice. Another person reached out independently and linked them up with a temporary shelter. People respond to each other\u2019s needs, and the more that happens, the braver people feel about being vulnerable and sharing these needs.\u201cA few people have shared that they felt so much more at peace. That safe space is a place where your body is not misgendered or misjudged, where one can just be, and be okay with taking up space.\u201dAll of this takes necessarily place out of the HDB sale\/purchase market and in the rental world, which has its own set of vulnerabilities \u2013 such as landlords refusing to rent to lesbian, gay, transgender, intersex and questioning (LGBTIQ) folks or choosing to evict renters on the basis of their sexuality.In addition, Raksha added that queer youths who have been outed against their will have faced homelessness after being kicked out of their natal homes. Others might grapple with psychological, physical and\/or sexual violence from their natal families, and might not have the time or resources to plan a secure departure and find appropriate external housing. These observations are supported by research conducted by organisations like Sayoni.\u201cSingapore\u2019s housing policies are so intertwined with how the state designs families to look like,\u201d Raksha said. \u201cBecause they cannot buy flats before 35, they have to pay rent for longer than married heterosexual couples.\u201dThe cost of an ideal family modelWaiting to turn 35 before qualifying to purchase a HDB under the Single Singapore Citizen Scheme is, for some, just too long. As Kerrie Wee, who recently bought a private apartment with her long-term girlfriend, said, \u201cThere\u2019s no real choice given to us \u2013 it\u2019s whether you rent, which is dead money, wait till you\u2019re 35, by which you would already have lived one third of your life, or purchase a private property.\u201dBut the decision to purchase your own home comes with its costs, which can be astronomical. \u201cWe would not have any grants or subsidies, so price was definitely a huge factor,\u201d Kerrie explained. \u201cI can understand that it would be hard to allow LGBTQ people to purchase HDB flats, because that would mean that they have to accept that there are such people in Singapore, but I do wish there was more support in purchasing our first home.\u201dSamantha summarised these issues succinctly when she acknowledged that \u201ceveryone knows our housing policy rewards heterosexual couples that fulfil the government\u2019s ideal of a family.\u201d Queer people are penalised, of course, but so are migrant women, single parents, and people who simply are not interested in the norms of marriage and children.People right now make do by working around HDB\u2019s policies but at some point, making do can no longer be enough. To rethink what makes a house a home is to make room for an expansion of possibilities that accommodates a range of family formations and communities bound together by mutual support and love, rather than solely by blood or by marriage.It is, after all, as HDB itself said, our home.ReferencesChua, B. H. (1997). Political legitimacy and housing: Stakeholding in Singapore. Routledge.Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Polity Press.Heng, G., & Devan, J. (1995). State fatherhood: The politics of nationalism, sexuality, and race in Singapore. In A. Ong & M. G. Peletz (Eds.), Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia (pp. 195\u2013215). University of California Press.Oswin, N. (2010). The modern model family at home in Singapore: A queer geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(2), 256\u2013268. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1475-5661.2009.00379.xWeston, K. (1991). Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. Columbia University Press.Join the conversations on THG’s\u00a0Facebook\u00a0and\u00a0Instagram, and get the latest updates via\u00a0Telegram."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Destinations","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Singapore","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/\/singapore\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Our Home: How HDB Shapes the Families it Wants","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/our-home-how-hdb-shapes-the-families-it-wants\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]