Confused/ Bizarre TOC Story

[kingrant]

True while TOC had made a laudable effort to rep the aggrieved parties, they ought to present and write up the case clearly and analyse all angles. The more reason to do so if the aim is to pitch it to the public to raise its ire and influence public opinion. If legally the case is not prima facie favourable, all the more impt to state the case as one of social injustice by a heartless govt and insensitive bureaucrats.

Besides, I would give the TOC crew a thumbs up for trying. Under the impression that they are undertaking this case pro bono. As (mostly) unpaid bloggers and journalists on a voluntary cause, I wouldn't expect high levels of journalistic professionalism. They do alright I think.

 

[Unrepented]

On a lighter note, this sounds like a prayer to some deity for deliverance.

Should have signed off; Your loyal and obedient citizen

 

[mojito]

To be fair, all involved in SERS ought to be able to get their replacement flats without having to jump through loops and hoops again. People who have lived in flats for a long time def would have moved on, got married, divorced, prospered or made other investments, so applying the rules as if they are a new family application is not fair.

I think implicit in the case where the authority is unwilling to compromise, is the need to plug some loopholes preventing speculation and use/misuse of public housing for investment purposes. Without more facts, I can't say for sure what the rationale is.

We may be on the same page on the principle of social equity. What we disagree on fundamentally is the nature of the contractual relationship between HDB and the buyer. You understand it to be a vanilla commercial transaction whereas I would frame it as a social contract with strings attached, where various knots tied and untied over the years to address deficiencies make it difficult to understand for the regular man-in-the-street.

Why no overhaul after so long? I am speculating perhaps some of the civil servants who proposed these policies are now holding senior positions in the ministry, or perhaps blind compliance has become the defining cultural norm of the Singaporean working in Singapore today as scroobal observed in another thread.

 

[kingrant]

To achieve the principle of social equity, the pre-SERS and post-SERS outcome must not be to the family's disadvantage. It could be put to the HDB that had the SERS not come along, Mrs Tay and her family could still be living happily with her son, with her hubby in Malaysia with his private property, and the daughter in Australia, and the HDB would be none the wiser.

The other thing to look at are the terms and conditions of the SERS and qualifying for the replacement flat. I'll be very surprised the HDB because of SERS now wants to plug the holes which they did not plug all along. She should consider legal action. I am sure there will be not a few like her.

I would frame it as a social contract with strings attached, where various knots tied and untied over the years to address deficiencies make it difficult to understand for the regular man-in-the-street.

 

[Fook Seng]

I am unclear on the specifics of the new policy so it is difficult for me to comment. However, I will make the case that HDB residents have many investment choices beyond leveraged asset purchases (i.e. housing). Furthermore, there are socially beneficial risk-taking activities (such as entrepreneurship and comedy) and socially undesirable ones (such as speculation and unprotected sex).

'Investments' into housing assets will spur demand for new real estate developments beyond the demand from people who actually need to use it. This can only cause problems later.

There are many types of investments, some like the stock market more volatile and others like bonds safer but with low returns. For many property serves the need for long term investment with a reasonable return. I am not going into speculation as it can exists in any form of investment. Let's solve the root of the problem which is supply, brought about by high population growth and poor planning. Minister Khaw admitted that it would take 4 to 5 years to correct the situation. Meanwhile Singapore loses its global competitiveness as to a large extent property prices determine the cost of living and doing business in Singapore.

 

[saratogas]

Divorce her husband, join name with her son to retain their HDB...

 

[mojito]

To achieve the principle of social equity, the pre-SERS and post-SERS outcome must not be to the family's disadvantage. It could be put to the HDB that had the SERS not come along, Mrs Tay and her family could still be living happily with her son, with her hubby in Malaysia with his private property, and the daughter in Australia, and the HDB would be none the wiser.

Bro kingrant, do you really buy the argument that hubby is in Malaysia, mother and son in Singapore and how they are all loyal obedient servants of the republic, had SERS not come along and caused distress to their happy family? There's more than meets the eye.
(I just realized from TOC website that she is not an SG citizen. Does that change your stance, kingrant?)

The TOC article raises more questions than answers, and I wonder how this will develop.

Without additional details, I am inclined to suspect there is a fundamental breach in the contract somewhere, and a breach of that condition means the agency can no longer to replace the old public housing contract with a new one. Especially if the rationale for that condition is well-founded, I cannot support an unconditional of pre-SERS and post-SERS outcome as you do, on the grounds of both social equity and to preserve the sanctity of the contract.

I am also less sympathetic about foreigners trying to benefit from SG's public housing programme.

 

[kingrant]

My stance would not change just because she is a PR here (from Malaysia, I presume) since my argument was from a social equity base.

What I suspect is that the whole family had bought the HDB flat and all their names were on the original application. Over the years, they bought a private prop and registered it under the hubby's name. Then the daughter bought another prop in Australia under her own name. Of course, had there been no SERS, they would be under the HDB radar and still happily living in it. I also gather from the writeup that Mrs Tay was trying to get her status "ratified", thus the fishing for information with what-ifs scenarios from the HDB officer, in order to exculpate her from any wrongdoing vis-a-vis the private props they now owned, which under new laws the hubby and daughter are not allowed to. The fact that the hubby sold off the malaysian prop shows that he is guilty conscious.

Thus basically the family unit criteria has changed with the woman asking to register the new flat with her son. There are also now private props owned by members of the same family unit that owned the original flat.

Still, I felt that had they managed the situation carefully and not trapped themselves into having to make false declarations, or to make any kind of declaration that gave them away, they could have come off without any incidents.

Bro kingrant, do you really buy the argument that hubby is in Malaysia, mother and son in Singapore and how they are all loyal obedient servants of the republic, had SERS not come along and caused distress to their happy family? There's more than meets the eye.
(I just realized from TOC website that she is not an SG citizen. Does that change your stance, kingrant?)

The TOC article raises more questions than answers, and I wonder how this will develop.

Without additional details, I am inclined to suspect there is a fundamental breach in the contract somewhere, and a breach of that condition means the agency can no longer to replace the old public housing contract with a new one. Especially if the rationale for that condition is well-founded, I cannot support an unconditional of pre-SERS and post-SERS outcome as you do, on the grounds of both social equity and to preserve the sanctity of the contract.

I am also less sympathetic about foreigners trying to benefit from SG's public housing programme.

 

[mojito]

My stance would not change either. If the rationale was sound, whether citizen, former citizen or PR, the rule must apply and all loopholes closed. If the principle applied is that HDB flats are public housing contracts which a condition will be breached in the event of a separate property ownership or residence, how is it consistent that the principle enshrined can be overcome through a different channel?

The fact that many people are already exploiting it doesn't make it right.

Case in point: Jaywalking isn't right, but what harm can it do when there is no traffic? But if you are caught and fined, please don't say "Oh! But many other people do that leh. Why me?"

Whether jaywalking should be fined, or can be enforced should be debated. But a consistent application should be applied unless it leads to an absurd outcome. To me, that is equality.

 

[scroobal]

I think forummer whikiphile said it well. It is appears to be an attack on HDB rather than poring out the issues clearly. The bigger issue is people will walk away because they can't even understand what happened.Our issue is that we got too many people doing voluntary and pro Bono work in a poor way that it does more damage than help our cause. Take Uncle Yap for example - a gift to the PAP.

Perhaps there are good reasons for information to be withheld, in order to advance the case or to bait a weak response from HDB.Besides, I would give the TOC crew a thumbs up for trying. Under the impression that they are undertaking this case pro bono. As (mostly) unpaid bloggers and journalists on a voluntary cause, I wouldn't expect high levels of journalistic professionalism. They do alright I think.

 

[scroobal]

I remember helping people like these before. HDB houses 85% of the population and therefore deals with thousands of such cases. They don't have the time to discriminate or apply inconsistent policies. What they do however is apply policies that favour the PAP and they do that consistently. They are a huge political asset to the PAP and the recent issue with workers party over use premises is a classic with PA involved as well. This is where TOC and people like Leong should focus. Chiam was very good at this in the early years in parliament and that is how he got into parliament in the first place.I won't be surprised that hubby had breached one of many conditions with the HDB in the past such as leasing out the property as a gambling den and therefore no longer an authorised occupier.

 

[kingrant]

Bros Scro & mojito,

Agree there's more than meets the eye. Still, it is a question of whether HDB can legally, and whether it's fair, to apply restrictive conditions retrospectively to a SERS-replacement case. After all, it is a mandatory en-bloc, and all of a sudden, a family is without a roof, notwithstanding it is a PR family.

There must be thousands out there like that. Let's see how it pans out.

 

[mojito]

I realized that throughout the discussion I may have become insensitive to the possibility that a family is thrown out into the streets and compensated only 50% for what their housing unit is worth in the market today because of some rules or whims which we cannot ascertain at the moment. There can be so many interpretations out there, and without clarifying ordinary readers will leave the site non the wiser. Anti-establishment will always find an excuse to blame the government, xenophobes on the migrants, etc and if HDB manages to sidestep the case, it leaves the undecided moderates to dismiss the claims of TOC and the anti-establishment as the 'lunatics' and whiners.

With TRE gone, TOC is the sole organized force left in the online world add pressure to question the establishment outside of parliament. It would be a shame if this and more of such articles would discredit and prevent moderates in the offline community from taking them seriously.

I have to agree with both kingrant and scroobal. This is bad for our cause (assuming we share the same one), but what role TOC wishes to play in the community is something 'management' and crew need to think about themselves, as did the 'breakaway' crews who started the various TOC 2.0s out there.