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Singaporeans get ’shafted’ by SHiFT housing scheme for ‘Foreign Talents’

November 11th, 2012 | Author: Editorial

For many years, the Govt has been quietly providing affordable public housing rentals to our ‘foreign talents’ in Singapore. A scheme managed by JTC called SHiFT (short form for “Scheme for Housing of Foreign Talent”) was conceived to help foreigners better settle in Singapore with subsidized rentals.

Under this scheme, foreigners are provided with affordable housing at monthly rental of up to 40% lower than market rates.

The scheme was launched in 1997 and is still available today: http://www.jtc.gov.sg/RealEstateSolutions/Housing/Pages/default.aspx.

After The Alternative View highlighted the existence of such a scheme in an article which was also republished on TRE (‘SHiFT: Scheme for Housing of Foreign Talent by JTC‘), not surprisingly, netizens reacted negatively.

The chief complaint is why the Govt is treating outsiders better than our own people?

Prithpal Singh: This is an utter disgrace, that a government elected by its own people, exploits its own citizens with exorbitantly priced HDB while private properties in prime locations are offered to foreign trash at 40% subsidy. I just cannot wait for what creative explanation they are going to come up with to explain this absurdity! It truly sickens me!

ber Bern: Can anyone tell me why do people still vote in a government who uses their hard earned money to SUBSIDISE FOREIGNERS? Stupid? Blind? It is really high time to kick these parasitic pap out of the parliament. Use our money to pay themselves millions, give scholarships to foreigners, SUBSIDISE their housing while always saying no to assisting the poor and needy in Singapore and always threatening to raise taxes. These parasites MUST GO. Singapore for SINGAPOREANS.

Conscientious Citizen: Before anything else, first ensure that there is enough Public flats and really affordable public flats for citizens.

Lim: They take care of foreigners so much better than our own people. Shame on these heartless people who do this!

Lactating Apes in the forest: This is a case of an irresponsible mother who abandons her newborn to lactate the apes in the forest. It’s a total betrayal; an act of treason!

Teo Kai Loon: I feel screwed by my own government.

Emily Boo: My colleague told me this about few months ago. Her Myanmar friend used to rent it from JTC at Tiong Bahru for very cheap rental and the place is very spacious so she rented out to her own people to earn extra income so she doesn’t need to pay any rental. In the end she bought herself a flat but I don’t know now whether is she still rented the place from JTC to rent it out to her own country people. See even foreigners can take this as a business and earn big bucks out of it then what are we as a Singaporeans? I find it very disgusted of our Govt has sold our country to foreigners. If wars really break out, do you still think they will remain in Singapore? Most of them have properties in other countries. Only left those who can’t get out will remain and die here!

Another argument put forth by netizens is that if these foreigners are truly talented, they should be able to earn enough to pay for market rate rentals themselves. They do not need subsidy:

Boon Huat Tan: if they are TRULY TALENT, they have NO need of any HOUSING assistance in any way…. they ought to be ABLE to EARN high enough salary to stay and live WELL

Singaporean: what? A “****” (Subsidised Housing for Incompetent foreign “Talents” ) Scheme for those cannot even earn enough to pay market rates for rentals?

A netizen asked why doesn’t the Govt rent these flats to our Singaporean young couples instead who are waiting for their HDB flats:

Li WeiJie: These housing can help to resolve Singaporeans population problem too. First of all, young couples have to wait for few years to tie the knots. These low rental housings are be provided to these group of young couples while waiting for their flat. Also it will encourage birth rates with couples tying the knots earlier.

With the rental subsidy given by Govt to foreigners, some netizens said this gives the foreigners unfair cost advantage when competing with locals for jobs since they can offer themselves at a lower salary. Our locals usually will have to deal with high mortgage payments even for HDB flats:

Bruce W M Wee: Part of the reasons why foreigners can undercut local and survive on lower pay; and why locals in real need got to wait 3 years for a rental unit.

Li WeiJie: Singaporeans PMET are already disadvantage by their low salary and this effectively lower their living cost especially rental. Singaporeans have to pay for the housing and looking after their parents and children and more. This artificially created a lower cost for the foreigners. Can the government review seriously the genuine skill set that we are short of? We can actually spend time to review and train Singaporeans for it.

Others accused the Govt of profiteering:

Lauschke Amy: Somewhere along the 80s, the scheme was hijacked by greedy ministers who wanted to generate GDP to pay themselves good bonuses. The trouble is, the scheme is actually administered by the civil service. The civil servants’ performance is measured by monetary terms? So, what better way than to go along with the ministers’ proposal to reserve these properties to rent out to foreigners.

Bruce W M Wee: I think those blocks at TPY and Red Hill are under this ShiFt scheme (where original residents got chased out under the pretext of ‘redevelopment’ and later converted into nice rental units for foreign Casino staff.)

ber Bern: Go to Toa Payoh and you can see the blocks 28, 29, 30, 32 etc…. whole blocks where residents were told to move for redevelopment. Well… redevelopment never took place and the blocks stood… as is for many years. Then… out of nowhere….. seeing a $ opportunity, Kaki Contractor called EM Services took over, cleaned up and put in furniture in every unit, some even with new flooring and aircon and began renting out these thousands of units, even offering commissions to property agents to help bring in tenants (this was