Tin Pei Ling, a Member of Parliament (MP) for Marine Parade GRC, tackled the issue of income ceilings for housing on her Facebook page on 27 May 2011.
In a post entitled “Short note on housing 1: Income Ceiling — a ‘ceiling’ that stifles? Likely,” Ms. Tin justified the need for the income ceiling and proposed several ways to determine and set the ceiling.
“Should there be a ceiling? I think there should still be one, so that only those who need public housing will benefit. This is the true spirit of HDB,” she wrote.
Elaborating on how the ceiling should be set, she noted that the current income ceiling for housing is set using the total gross income of all persons listed in the Application Form.
“But other measures are possible too, e.g. disposable income. Although this raises a separate discussion — what kind of expenditure is ‘must spend’ and what is ‘would like to be able to spend’.”
“All these affect the remaining disposable income. Essentially, the measures need to best represent the ability of Singaporeans to afford public housing.”
In addition, Ms. Tin also addressed questions such as “How much should this ceiling be?” She believes the income ceiling should be pegged to the 90th percentile of combined household incomes, since the home ownership rate of resident households is approximately 90 percent.
“But this might include a group of those who currently would have chosen private property anyway. However, if Singaporeans’ incomes continue to rise, then the distribution of combined household incomes will be expected to shift as well,” explained Ms. Tin.
“In this case, a regular and cyclical review of the income ceiling should be conducted.”
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