Another 800 temporary flats for young families waiting for housing

SINGAPORE — More flats under the Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme (PPHS) will be rolled out starting early next year and families will also have the option to co-rent their flat, under the latest round of enhancements to the scheme.

Announcing this in a blog post yesterday, Minister for National Development Khaw Boon Wan said PPHS — introduced last year to provide young families with temporary housing while waiting for their new Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats — has been well received and more could be done to help these families.

To that end, another 800 flats — mainly three-room flats — will be added in towns including Bukit Merah, Queenstown and Jurong West to boost the existing supply of 1,150 PPHS flats. The HDB said about 1,000 of the existing supply of PPHS flats are occupied.

Mr Khaw said the HDB is in the process of retrofitting these flats, which will be progressively rolled out and open to applicants from early next year. More information on the new supply of these PPHS flats will be available on the HDB InfoWEB.

Originally open to first-timer married couples with children below the age of 16, PPHS was extended in April last year to include first-time couples waiting for Build-to-Order (BTO) flats, second-timer married couples and single-parent families with children.

Starting tomorrow, new applicants and existing tenants in PPHS flats will also be able to opt for co-renting of their PPHS flat with friends or relatives, who are also eligible for the scheme.

Co-renting will be available for all flat types, with a maximum of two eligible families sharing one flat.

Noting that the few vacant PPHS flats are larger in size, Mr Khaw said: “This will be useful for those who feel that they do not need a whole flat, especially if it is four- or five-room.”

Mr Teo Yu Ming, 28, who moved out of his rented three-room PPHS flat in Ang Mo Kio with his wife and son in July, agreed that co-renting would have helped tenants like him with the cost of rent.

However, he said limiting co-renting to other families eligible for the scheme is too restrictive. Families would not be able to split the cost of rent with single friends and relatives living alone in rented flats, because they are not eligible for the scheme.

Mr Teo, who paid S$900 a month in cash for almost a year, also suggested the ministry look into allowing monthly rentals to be half-deductiblefrom Central Provident Fund monies, especially for families with children. “Although it’s a lot less than the market rate … I think back then, S$900 a month was quite (hard), because on top of that I had to pay for my son’s childcare fees,” he said.