Introduction of Public Housing

Housing is one of the basic necessities of life. Buying a house or a flat is not as easy as buying a ball pen. The price of this kind of asset is increase rapidly in the recent years. Therefore, some difficulties have been appeared for those who want to have one. Since higher housing price will affect the economy of the country, the government has some remedies to solve it. Public housing is one of the remedies.

Public housing is housing that is constructed, manipulated and owned by the government authority. It is provided to those low-income families, elderly and people with disabilities to live at a nominal rent or built to provide them a safe and an affordable place to live in. Some countries may call public housing the “social housing”, another term that refers to rental housing which is owned and manipulated by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of this two. The aim of social housing is also to provide an affordable housing to the needy. Social housing is sometimes regarded as a potential remedy to inequality of housing.

The requirements, definitions of poverty and other criteria of the public housing are not the same in different areas of the world though the aim to offer an affordable housing to the needy is the same.

For instance, in Hong Kong, the housing policies mainly focus on the public housing. About 50% of the Hong Kong residents live in the public housing.

In Singapore, the development of the residential housing are governed and developed by the Housing and Development Board. Most of the residents are living in this type of house.