Jamus continues house visits. 
Last night, #TeamSengkang made a start on our house visits at 313D #Anchorvale. Our conversations were the usual lively mix of warm greetings, feedback on policies of national relevance, and suggestions on how to improve various aspects of the estate.
One family we spoke to talked about the challenges faced by households with three children. This is certainly a somewhat more niche concern in Singapore—where our fertility rate hovers at around one child per woman—but a better understanding of the particular challenges such families face can offer insight into how we may wish to revise our pro-family policies, beyond offering modest (in the grand scheme of things) monetary incentives for additional children, or priority in housing allocation. It entails accounting for how daily life can be made easier for families that comprise five or more, instead of three or four.
One simple example has to do with cars. Currently, a regular sedan would hold a family with 2 kids, but add another, and one is likely to need an upgrade to a 7-seater, and its correspondingly higher COE. As another example, the upgrade route for 5-room HDB flats is usually a condo, but these, while being more expensive, do not necessarily offer more space.
Now, it is important to stress—as this family did—that such households aren’t looking for special treatment, per se. But that doesn’t mean that a society cannot design policies to help such families out. Perhaps we can give special dispensation for families with 3 children to purchase COEs under the regular, smaller-car category. Or HDB could consider reviving the now-defunct format of executive flats—in particular, those that include 4 bedrooms—to allow such families an opportunity for a larger BTO flat, rather than having to rely on the pricier (and more limited) resale market. #SengkangGRC
Jamus Lim
8 hrs ·Last night, #TeamSengkang made a start on our house visits at 313D #Anchorvale. Our conversations were the usual lively mix of warm greetings, feedback on policies of national relevance, and suggestions on how to improve various aspects of the estate.
One family we spoke to talked about the challenges faced by households with three children. This is certainly a somewhat more niche concern in Singapore—where our fertility rate hovers at around one child per woman—but a better understanding of the particular challenges such families face can offer insight into how we may wish to revise our pro-family policies, beyond offering modest (in the grand scheme of things) monetary incentives for additional children, or priority in housing allocation. It entails accounting for how daily life can be made easier for families that comprise five or more, instead of three or four.
One simple example has to do with cars. Currently, a regular sedan would hold a family with 2 kids, but add another, and one is likely to need an upgrade to a 7-seater, and its correspondingly higher COE. As another example, the upgrade route for 5-room HDB flats is usually a condo, but these, while being more expensive, do not necessarily offer more space.
Now, it is important to stress—as this family did—that such households aren’t looking for special treatment, per se. But that doesn’t mean that a society cannot design policies to help such families out. Perhaps we can give special dispensation for families with 3 children to purchase COEs under the regular, smaller-car category. Or HDB could consider reviving the now-defunct format of executive flats—in particular, those that include 4 bedrooms—to allow such families an opportunity for a larger BTO flat, rather than having to rely on the pricier (and more limited) resale market. #SengkangGRC
