What makes Singapore’s public housing system unique? Can we replicate it? For former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, enabling home ownership was a way to get Singaporeans to defend their homes (and country) and to “take National Service seriously”.

Today, nearly 80% of Singaporean households live in public housing units. The man instrumental in making public housing “nation-building infrastructure”, Dr Liu Thai Ker passed away last month.

I summarised an essay I wrote in 2024 on this topic in the images below. Singapore uses public housing to serve multiple national policy goals at once.

The Singapore housing model works because of its interlinked, mutually reinforcing policies and mechanisms that continues to co-evolve over time. The Housing & Development Board (HDB) model cannot be copy-pasted as it is not a single policy but a system of aligned choices.

This is my personal view based on my research as a non-Singaporean outsider. Perhaps an insider has a different version of the public housing story to share?