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COMMENTARY: Our contributor Abel Ang shares his thoughts on HDB living and how it's the best choice for him.

As the CEO of a local multi-national medical device company with 1,000 staff globally, I am proud to be living in the same Housing Development Board (HDB) flat that I bought when I first got married 23 years ago.

Living in "hardship"

Years ago, over a working lunch, a senior off-shore banker asked me why I put my family through such “hardship”, choosing to live in a HDB flat instead of moving out to more comfortable surroundings in the form of a condominium or a landed property.

At the time, I blithely shrugged off the comment blaming inertia, saying that we just never got around to moving out, and changed the topic.

Years after, this is how I should have replied the offshore banker, using the letters that make up the name of the public housing agency of Singapore – HDB.

H: Housing for all

Affordable housing is a huge issue globally. According to Habitat for Humanity, 12 million people in the U.S. pay more than 50 per cent of their annual income on housing, and are thus living in what the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development calls “conditions of unaffordability.”

The non-profit goes on to point out that in Europe there is a “silent emergency” for affordable housing and the issue is getting worse and at a faster rate.

In the 1960s when the Housing Development Board (HDB) first started, there was a housing crisis in Singapore. At the time only 9 per cent of the population was living in public housing, with many living in slums and squatter settlements.

Fast forward to today, according to the World Bank, Singapore has the best public housing program in the world. Our country’s 1 million HDB flats and high home ownership rates show how we have managed to avoid the housing crisis’ that plague many other countries. Having lived in the US and Europe, I can confirm that we have a better handle on the problem than most countries.

While we can debate if our public housing is affordable enough, or if we are building them fast enough, there is no debate on how HDB flats have housed the majority of the population and created wealth for many. That is something we can be proud of.

D: Design for liveability

My eldest son, R, said that he likes the design of our HDB apartment because of its compact size. He likes how easy it is to keep track of who is at home and who isn’t.

We have a family practice that when anyone gets home from work or school, the first thing that we do is to sound a greeting into the home, and whoever is there responds – signaling who is back.

Beyond our flat, according to HDB’s website each of their towns is “designed to be self-sufficient, with easy access to shops, schools, and social and recreational facilities, and an abundance of greenery.”

The neighbourhood that I live in is no different. When our kids were little, they attended the primary school nearby and would walk back from school after their activities each day.

They did not have any anxiety about their first day at school, because other kids they knew from the neighbourhood all attended the same school. For them school was the extension of playground time, with some teachers, books, and homework thrown in.

Our family shops at nearby supermarkets and exercises at the fitness corner cum running track below our block.

The nearby coffeeshop is a gathering point for neighbours to get quick and inexpensive meals. It also doubles up as a nightly pub for those who want to relax after a hard day’s work over evening drinks.

Our estate, built in 1978, is nestled in lush, landscaped greenery. The driveway into the estate is lined by a series of towering trees that have been there since the estate was built.

The greenery does not just serve the human occupants of our estate, but also a brood of 30 wild chickens that have decided to set up camp here.

For me, waking up to roosters crowing in the morning has given the estate a rustic charm, unfortunately the chickens do irritate some neighbours because of how early they start crowing each morning.

Despite the early morning wake-up calls, the Circuit Breaker period, during the pandemic, made me realise how self-sufficient our neighbourhood really is. For almost two months in 2020, my family didn’t need to venture far from home.

With everything that we could ever need close by, it becomes very difficult to think of moving elsewhere.

B: Bonds that last

The relationship bonds of a HDB estate begin when a newborn is brought home from the hospital. As newbie parents make their way home with their baby, they will be inevitably stopped by neighbours for a quick introduction to the new earthling.

These young babies are inducted into the neighbourhood playground club from a young age. The playground is where many young kids can be found in their early childhood years, befriending each other as they run, hide, and quarrel with each other, building lifelong friendships along the way.

An intergenerational bond is formed between kids and the “aunty patrol”, which guards the playground during the primetime of play, between 5 to 7pm each evening. The group of aunties is made up mostly of geriatric grannies who sit by the playground watching the world go by, being entertained by the kid’s antics, until their nightly 7pm evening drama comes on TV.

The grannies provide oversight to which kid has been naughty, and the kids know to heed their warnings because when the parents return from work, they usually get a download of their kid’s “crimes” from the aunty patrol.

The playground is but one of several common areas for people of all ages and races to intermingle and socialise.

Another gathering point for the estate is our neighbourhood’s open-air badminton court. Besides badminton and sepak takraw games, for which the court was built, pickleball games have started to appear on the court.

The game which is played with wooden bats and heavy plastic balls is more suited to the open-air conditions in Singapore than badminton because of how badminton shuttlecocks are sometimes carried off by breezes blowing through.

The entire neighbourhood is invited to ensuing pickleball games which are peppered with trash talking, killer drop shots, and an air of camaraderie which draws both young and old alike.

The cycle of life of a HDB resident usually ends at the void deck. Void decks are where funerals are held in the estate and is how we, as a neighbourhood, bid farewell to those that have passed away due to age or infirmity.

While consoling the family members, our community also collectively grieves for those that have passed, relishing memories, and ruing the loss.

HDB - The Best Choice For Me

If not for where we live, my kids would not have as many friends from different racial groups and across generations as they have today.

The bond of the community is reflected in how our family interacts with our Malay postwoman who comes to deliver the mail each day. She literally knows everyone in our block and has promised to immediately notify me about the arrival of the military service enlistment letter that my elder son has been eagerly awaiting.

Ultimately, I choose to continue living in my HDB flat because I cannot imagine living elsewhere.

Instead of the hardship that the offshore banker imagined, it is housing that works. Besides being an affordable place to live, it is designed in a way that builds community and which fosters bonds that bind.

It is the best option for me and isn’t a compromise in any way.

Photo by Andrew Haha Lee on Unsplash