Singapore rule change – another example

This is more hearsay-based.  In the 1960s, and ever since, the Singapore government made its first priority to build housing for the teeming millions living in slum conditions in the city – you know, five or six in a room, no running water, a communal tap in the street and two toilets for a building housing 80 people. It created the Housing Development Board, which promptly started to create the current Singapore landscape – gazillions of high-rise apartment blocks, with working elevators, electricity, running water, garbage collection, proper sewage disposal, playgrounds, recreation facilities, and so forth.  Then it provided these homes to anyone who could rent or purchase them, subject to various checks on ethnicity and prior home ownership (to ensure that there’s no single-race enclave, and that nobody takes advantage of government programs to become a slumlord).  Reasonable enough, right?  And the people saved their money and bought these apartments, lived and brought up their children relatively free of mosquitos and filth, and lo, it was good.

Came a day when the government noticed that the kids had grown up, moved out and bought their own apartments, and some bright star in the housing department wondered why an elderly woman whose five children had departed still needed those five rooms that the gov. had built.  This lady got letters and phone calls from the HDB, asking her to yield her apartment to some worthy young couple with kids, since she clearly didn’t need all that space any more.  The government thinking was that she’d go live with some of her offspring, as per asian tradition.

Did she respond well to this?  She did not.  “Hmph!  If my government can’t even provide me a house to be old in, I’m outta here!”  She emigrated to New Zealand.  I was not told what became of her apartment, whether the gov’t grabbed it in a fit of eminent domain or she sold it and moved on the proceeds.  I wonder if she left it to her kids?

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