The Housing Policy: HDB, the Ethnic Integration Policy, and Forced Proximity as Nation-Building

Thesis

The most consequential single institutional innovation of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore is the Housing and Development Board’s public housing programme, combined with the 1989 Ethnic Integration Policy that established ethnic quotas for HDB blocks and neighbourhoods. Approximately 80 percent of Singaporean citizens live in HDB flats. The flats are owned by the residents (through the 99-year leasehold system) with substantial government subsidy at initial purchase and with resale value that has appreciated substantially over the decades. The ethnic composition of each block and neighbourhood is engineered through the EIP quotas to prevent the re-formation of ethnic enclaves — Chinese, Malay, and Indian Singaporeans live next to each other, in the same buildings, sharing the same building services, staircases, elevators, common areas, and neighbourhood facilities. The specific quotas (at the block level, 87 percent Chinese, 25 percent Malay, 15 percent Indian and Others as revised in 2010) track national demographic proportions with allowance for local variation, and once a block or neighbourhood reaches an ethnic group’s quota, further purchases by that group are prohibited.

The article’s argument is that this policy is the operational core of Singaporean identity construction and provides the closest specific institutional template for Ethiopia’s identity-construction requirements. What the HDB and EIP produce is forced proximity — the daily physical adjacency of citizens from different ethnic backgrounds — that over generations converts abstract national community into lived experience of shared national life. The Chinese Singaporean and the Malay Singaporean and the Indian Singaporean share the same building, ride the same elevator, use the same courtyard, encounter each other daily in circumstances neither has chosen. Over time, this daily forced encounter produces the ordinary human relationships (neighbourly acknowledgement, occasional conversation, mutual assistance, familiarity with each other’s daily routines) that voluntary integration would not have produced. This is what Zef captured with the salt-and-neighbour analogy in developing the series. The policy is coercive; it operates against the natural preference for ethnic homogeneity that housing markets left to themselves produce; but the coercion is at the level of policy rather than of direct interpersonal violence, and the outcomes it produces have justified the coercion in Singaporean self-understanding.

The HDB programme

The Housing and Development Board was established on 1 February 1960 to address the acute housing crisis Singapore faced at that time. Approximately half the population lived in overcrowded slums; the private housing market was dysfunctional; the colonial-era housing infrastructure was inadequate. The Board was given substantial powers to acquire land, plan townships, construct buildings, and allocate housing.¹

The scale of the HDB programme through the following six decades is difficult to overstate. By 1965 (five years after establishment), 100,000 HDB units had been built. By 1980, over 500,000. By 2000, over 750,000. By 2024, over 1.1 million HDB units housed approximately 3.3 million Singaporean citizens and permanent residents, representing about 80 percent of the resident population.² The HDB towns — Toa Payoh, Ang Mo Kio, Bedok, Tampines, Jurong East, Woodlands, Punggol, and many others — are the operational geography of Singaporean urban life, with over 20 distinct towns each housing between 100,000 and 300,000 residents.

The HDB flats operate under a specific ownership model. Flats are leased for 99 years at initial-purchase prices that are substantially below what unsubsidised market prices would produce; the leasehold can be sold in the resale market at appreciated values; the appreciation over the 99-year period has been substantial, giving HDB residents a substantial asset base. The Central Provident Fund (Singapore’s mandatory savings scheme) can be used to finance HDB purchases, integrating the housing model with the broader Singaporean framework of individual savings and household economic responsibility. The specific model — subsidised initial purchase with market-appreciating resale value, financed through mandatory savings — has produced substantial household wealth for Singaporean citizens while addressing the immediate housing needs of the population.³

The HDB flats are physically standardised. Blocks are of similar architectural design across towns; unit layouts are standardised in a small number of variants; building services (elevators, water, electricity, sanitation) are provided by central authorities. The standardisation is deliberate: it produces environments in which the physical setting of citizens’ daily lives is not differentiated by ethnicity, wealth level, or region. A Chinese Singaporean in Tampines and a Malay Singaporean in Woodlands live in flats of essentially similar layout and quality, in blocks that look similar, in towns that operate similarly. The physical uniformity is one of the identity-constructing mechanisms of the framework.

The Ethnic Integration Policy

The Ethnic Integration Policy was introduced on 1 March 1989 by then-Minister for National Development S. Dhanabalan.⁴ The specific problem the policy addressed was the observed re-formation of ethnic enclaves in HDB estates through the 1970s and 1980s. Dhanabalan’s parliamentary presentation on 16 February 1989 cited examples: Bedok and Tampines neighbourhoods with over 30 percent Malay households (versus the 14 percent national demographic); Hougang neighbourhoods with over 90 percent Chinese households (versus the 74 percent national). The re-formation reflected voluntary preferences — Chinese, Malay, and Indian Singaporeans in the resale market had shown tendencies to purchase flats in areas with existing concentrations of their own ethnic group.

The government’s assessment was that the re-formation, if left unchecked, would reproduce the pre-independence ethnic-communal geography that had produced the 1964 riots. The policy response was the imposition of ethnic quotas on HDB purchases at both the block and neighbourhood level. The original 1989 quotas were: block level 84 percent Chinese, 22 percent Malay, 10 percent Indian and Others; neighbourhood level 87 percent Chinese, 25 percent Malay, 13 percent Indian and Others. In 2010, the Indian-and-Others quota was raised to 12 percent (neighbourhood) and 15 percent (block) to reflect the growing Indian and Others populations from immigration.⁵

The policy operates in a specific way. When a buyer wants to purchase a HDB flat (either new from HDB or resale from an existing owner), HDB checks whether the buyer’s ethnic group has capacity in the specific block and neighbourhood. If the ethnic group has already reached its quota, the purchase is prohibited. If the ethnic group has capacity, the purchase proceeds. The policy applies to citizens and permanent residents; new immigrants are counted under an additional 8 percent non-citizen cap per block. Rental of entire flats to tenants of different ethnicity is also subject to quota check.⁶

The policy’s operational consequences have been mixed. On the intended dimension, it has been substantially successful: the ethnic composition of HDB blocks and neighbourhoods has tracked national demographic proportions rather than developing enclave concentrations. On unintended dimensions, the policy has produced specific problems: minority-ethnic sellers face reduced buyer pools when their block’s Chinese quota is at capacity, producing potential price effects; some flats have remained empty for extended periods because the eligible ethnic buyers have not appeared; mixed-marriage households and multi-ethnic identities do not fit neatly into the classification system. These problems have been the subject of continuing political debate but have not produced substantial revision of the framework.

The identity-construction mechanism

The specific mechanism by which the HDB and EIP produce identity construction operates at several levels.

Daily forced proximity. Chinese, Malay, and Indian Singaporeans living in the same block share the daily encounters of building life. The elevator ride to work brings the Chinese office worker, the Malay government clerk, and the Indian retail employee into the same space in the morning and again in the evening. The block’s void deck (the covered ground-floor common area under HDB flats) is where children of different ethnic backgrounds play together, where residents encounter each other at community events, where the routine social life of the building unfolds. The specific meaning of “Singaporean” as identity is constructed, in part, through the accumulated experience of these encounters across generations of HDB residents.⁷

Shared urban infrastructure. The HDB town includes shared markets (hawker centres selling Chinese, Malay, Indian, and other cuisines side by side), shared transit (MRT stations serving all residents equally), shared educational infrastructure (neighborhood schools drawing students from all ethnic groups in the catchment area), shared healthcare (polyclinics serving the town’s population), shared recreational infrastructure (parks, community centres, sports facilities). The specific meaning of “living in Tampines” or “living in Ang Mo Kio” transcends ethnic identification; it is the shared experience of the town’s infrastructure that defines the residency.

Shared national symbols and observances. HDB blocks and estates fly the Singaporean flag on National Day; observe the various national ceremonial dates; participate in the National Day parade and its neighbourhood-level celebrations. The specific place-based experience of Singaporean national observance takes place in the HDB context. Children growing up in HDB blocks associate their national identity with the specific block and town in which they live rather than with an abstract national geography.

Cross-ethnic children’s friendships. Children in HDB towns attend neighbourhood schools, play in shared courtyards, and form friendships across ethnic lines that would have been more difficult in ethnic-enclave neighbourhoods. The specific personal networks that form in childhood become the adult social networks that operate in workplaces, civic organisations, and political life. The identity construction is inter-generational: each generation of children raised in HDB towns produces cross-ethnic personal networks that operate for their adult lifetimes.

The Group Representation Constituency system

The GRC electoral system, introduced in 1988, is the specific electoral-institutional complement to the HDB-EIP housing policy. The system requires certain parliamentary constituencies to be contested by teams of three to six candidates, of which at least one must be from an ethnic minority (Malay, Indian, or Other). Each team wins or loses together. The system was introduced explicitly to ensure that minority ethnic groups would be represented in parliament even in constituencies where the demographic majority might not have selected minority candidates through single-member contest.⁸

The GRC system has been criticised on multiple grounds — that it disadvantages opposition parties (which must field minority candidates as well), that it produces less-competitive contests than single-member constituencies, that it operationalises ethnicity in electoral politics in ways that could be regarded as reifying ethnic categories. All of these criticisms have force. The system’s defenders respond that the alternative — electoral politics in which minority ethnic representation depends on demographic accident — would produce worse outcomes, particularly given the specific Singaporean context in which the Chinese majority could easily produce all-Chinese parliaments if left to unstructured electoral politics.

For the identity-construction argument, the GRC system is significant because it institutionalises the ethnic-integration principle at the level of electoral representation. Each Singaporean voter, in a GRC constituency, casts a ballot that will elect a team including minority-ethnic members. The specific political-institutional experience of Singaporean citizenship includes the expectation and reality of multi-ethnic parliamentary representation.

The costs

The HDB-EIP framework carries specific costs that this series does not minimise.

Restriction of resident choice. Singaporeans cannot choose to live wherever they want. If a Chinese Singaporean wishes to buy a specific flat that would exceed the block’s Chinese quota, the purchase is prohibited. If a Malay family wishes to concentrate in a particular neighbourhood with other Malay families, the concentration is prevented. The policy operates against individual preference for ethnic clustering; the preference is not respected.

Reduced resale value for minority sellers. When a Malay or Indian seller lists a HDB flat, the pool of eligible buyers is restricted by the block’s quota status. In blocks where the minority quota has reached capacity, sellers can only sell to buyers of the same minority ethnicity, reducing the buyer pool and potentially reducing sale price. This is a specific cost borne disproportionately by minority ethnic groups.

Reification of ethnic categories. The policy operationalises ethnic classification in ways that presume ethnic identity is discrete, stable, and administratively determinable. Mixed-marriage households, multi-ethnic identities, and evolving self-identification are handled through administrative rules (typically the father’s ethnicity is registered at birth) that do not fully accommodate individual complexity. The categorisation is one of the specific institutional costs of the framework.

Administrative complexity and enforcement. The HDB and EIP require substantial administrative infrastructure: property registries by ethnic composition, purchase-approval systems, enforcement mechanisms, appeal processes. The administrative apparatus is a substantial state institution with its own operational costs and its own potential for errors and abuses.

What the case shows for Ethiopia

The HDB-EIP framework is not directly transferable to Ethiopia, but it establishes propositions relevant to the Ethiopian argument.

First, that forced-proximity policy can work to construct pan-ethnic identity where voluntary integration would not have. Singapore’s Chinese, Malay, and Indian populations were unlikely to have integrated voluntarily; the market pressures were toward ethnic clustering. The policy intervened to override the market and produced integration outcomes that the market would not have delivered. Ethiopia’s ethnic populations are in analogous position: voluntary migration and settlement have produced substantial ethnic clustering in cities (Addis Ababa’s Oromo, Tigrayan, Amhara, and other communities have identifiable geographic concentrations) and in regional states. Voluntary integration will not, on its own, produce the pan-ethnic identity outcomes that state-directed forced-proximity policy could produce.

Second, that the specific mechanism can be housing policy operating on daily life. Ethiopia has, over the past two decades, undertaken substantial urban housing construction, particularly in Addis Ababa (the condominium housing programmes under the various administrations). The construction has not, so far, been coupled with ethnic-integration policy comparable to Singapore’s EIP. A Singaporean-style policy applied to Ethiopian condominium housing — establishing ethnic quotas at the building or district level to prevent enclave formation — would be one specific mechanism through which identity construction could be pursued.

Third, that the policy requires substantial state capacity and sustained political will. The HDB has operated for over sixty years. The EIP has operated for thirty-seven years. Both have been sustained across leadership succession (Lee to Goh to Lee Hsien Loong to Wong) without substantial modification. Ethiopian identity-construction policy on the Singaporean template would require analogous durability — commitment across decades and across leadership changes to a policy framework whose payoffs would only appear over generations.

Fourth, that the costs can be borne if the returns are perceived. Singaporean citizens have, over the decades, largely accepted the EIP’s restriction of individual choice because the returns (ethnic peace, national identity, HDB asset appreciation) have been perceived as worth the cost. Ethiopian identity-construction policy would carry analogous costs (restriction of individual settlement preference, reification of ethnic categories, administrative complexity) that would have to be accepted by populations whose acceptance is not automatic.

What comes next

Article 13 examines the language and education dimension of Singaporean identity construction: the bilingual policy that produced the working English + mother tongue framework; the standardised national curriculum; the specific institutional mechanisms of language-based identity work. Article 14 examines the specific costs of the Singaporean framework at the political level — PAP monopoly, constrained press, bounded democracy — and asks whether these costs are acceptable in the Ethiopian case.

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References

Footnotes

1. On the HDB establishment and early operations, see Loh Kah Seng, Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and the Making of Modern Singapore (Asian Studies Association of Australia, 2013). ↩

2. HDB Annual Reports, various years; official statistics for 2024. ↩

3. On the HDB ownership model and CPF integration, see the Ministry of National Development, “Public Housing – A Singapore Icon” (2015). ↩

4. On the 1989 EIP introduction, see S. Dhanabalan’s parliamentary presentation on 16 February 1989 (Singapore Parliament, Hansard, Vol. 52, cols. 650–651). ↩

5. On the 2010 quota revisions, see HDB announcements 2010; Ministry of National Development statements. ↩

6. On EIP operations, see the HDB e-Services EIP/SPR Enquiry system; recent 2025 and 2026 analyses in Singapore property publications. ↩

7. On daily proximity as identity-construction mechanism, see Chua Beng Huat, Political Legitimacy and Housing: Singapore’s Stakeholder Society (Routledge, 1997); Terence Chong, ed., Management of Success: Singapore Revisited (ISEAS, 2010). ↩

8. On the GRC system, see Tan, An Introduction to Singapore’s Constitution, ch. 5. ↩