2024 Week 21: Renters & Owners

A common story I heard while talking to members of the low-income community goes like this. 

Once upon a time, they got married and bought an HDB flat with their new spouses. But then the marriage fell apart and they had to sell the house. Ever since then, they have been living in a low-income rental flat. After the divorce, they - many of the people I spoke to are women - had to raise the kids, so they weren't able to work. Therefore their low-income status persisted for another 10 to 20 years. 

Some met new partners and got married after moving to a rental. However, the man being typically the sole breadwinner, this usually wasn't enough to lift them out of the poverty line (to qualify for subsidised rental, the income ceiling is $1,500 per household). And often they made more children, which kept the women out of employment for longer.

I spoke to some women who had gone back to work after their kids were old enough. The only times they could work was when the kids were in school - a few hours in the mornings. It's not easy to find part-time employment that works for this schedule. The options are generally limited to cashiering at a supermarket or being a part-time cleaner at a mall. 

The low status of these jobs has nothing to do with the merit of the worker. A lot of these women were clearly way too smart/competent/skilled/resourceful to be cleaning toilets, but there just isn't any work that fits with their responsibilities.

As their kids got older some were able to increase their working hours to full-time. It's only at this point they're able to play catch-up on years of unearned income and CPF. 

But The Rules slow down the process of reintegrating the poor back into mainstream society. Suppose you're living in a rental. Once your income goes up beyond a threshold, you no longer qualify for subsidised rent (about $100-200 a month). HDB won't evict you, but they'll increase your rent. A couple of people I met now pay nearly $700 a month on rent and conservancy fees ever since they started working full-time. 

On the one hand, paying full-price rental motivates residents to buy their own homes. But the added expense slows down their rate of savings. So the journey from renting to owning a home can take a very long time. One woman I spoke to is finally getting her 2nd BTO after an agonising 24-year wait.

Not everyone is this motivated to buy a place. Some don't see buying a flat as an option. They are already embedded in the central location of their rental - their kids go to school nearby, they work in town - and a purchase flat in the same area would cost close to $1 million. Out of the question! So some of these people don't mind paying non-subsidised rent. Sure, they could probably spend the money on cheaper flat in, say, Woodlands, but then the entire family's work/school/healthcare arrangements would be shattered.

A subset of the group are the over-50s. These residents are pretty much stuck in rental because they don't have enough to buy a home and their earning power will only decrease in the future. Either that, or they find it unwise to take on the financial commitment at their age. Well, you can't argue with that. So these are the forever-renters.

So these are the common stories of people living in low-income rental flats, the "projects" of Singapore. I was surprised by how "typically Singaporean" some of them are. That worries me. Did I unconsciously exclude rental flat residents from our ordinary social fabric? Did I think they weren't allowed to be part of the "Singapore dream"?

I had subconsciously thought of the residents as other - deviants based on housing type! After all, owning a home is kind of the baseline of success in Singapore. HDB is always hammering it into our heads how affordable public housing is. Getting a house is kind of like getting a "pass" grade in life. I didn't realise how lucky one has to be to own a flat and continue to own it. Just one unlucky misstep - unplanned pregnancy, cheating spouse - and you might end up in a stigmatized community.

By the way, I've learnt that there isn't such a thing as an objectively "bad" or "good" neighbourhood. Talking to residents in the same estate, I'm struck by how wildly different their pronouncements can be.

The ones who thrive tend to be the active volunteers, the ones who are plugged into their community. They feel they live in an abundant neighbourhood with a good support network and kind neighbours. Then there are those keep their doors closed and keep to themselves. They're ashamed of their dirty shabby surroundings and disgusted by their gangster junkie neighbours. Perceptions inform actions that confirm those same perceptions... a very human vicious circle.

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So, my first week in Volunteer Management at Beyond. What a dramatic shift. Number of days I went to work physically = 0. 

But the nature of work is also drastically different. Admin is tedious and eyeball-blasting work, but amazingly linear. There's a causal relationship between the time/effort you put in and the results. It couldn't be more different from community work. Sometimes you strike jackpot and hit it off right away. Sometimes you put years of effort into a certain person and it never pays off. Sometimes your hard-won relationships dissolve overnight when community members move away.

The first couple of days, I felt very relaxed and free. Loving every second of WFH, getting back into my old routines of reading, housework, doing yoga. Then I started to wish I could go to work; I wanted a reason to put on some going-out clothes and interact with people. Then I found myself missing the time I spent in the community. Which is funny, because when I was doing that I felt very dehydrated and headache-y most of the time.

I have developed some self-awareness in the past 2 months. I can now feel the limits to how far I can take my interests. For example, being an animal lover doesn't mean I can survive a job as a zookeeper. And as much as I enjoy working with underprivileged people at Beyond, I cannot spend the bulk of my waking hours on it.

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I've been taking stock of what I've been doing in the past 3 years, which is basically test-driving retirement. My tentative conclusion is that I cannot retire, lol. I don't like the life of leisure all that much. It's just boring. I need some kind of work to engage my hands and brain - that's my idea of living well.

I have not even touched the money I saved up in preparation for this mini-retirement. And some of it has sat in my investment account and grown, apparently. So now I have about $200K in investments and cash. Basically I didn't have a proper job for 3 years and am somehow richer than ever, WTF. There is a serious mental barrier to touching that money. I feel like I can only spend the money I'm currently making - I don't deserve to spend more that. I guess I'd make a pretty bad rentier capitalist. 

Uh... I still don't have any answers as to what to do with the rest of my life. But, for now, I want to finish reading the Penguin History of the World (just started on that again, am now at page 1,000!), continue exploring style/makeup, and er... eat more avocado?