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Podcast: New Books in Public Policy
Episode: Beng Huat Chua, "Public Subsidy, Private Accumulation: The Political Economy of Singapore's Public Housing" (NUS Press, 2024)
Description: The achievement of Singapore’s national public housing program is impressive by any standard. Within a year of its first election victory in 1959, the People's Action Party began to deliver on its promises in dramatic fashion. By the 1980s, 85 percent of the population had been rehoused in modern flats, and today, decades later, the provision of public housing shapes Singapore's environment. The standard accounts of this remarkable transformation leave many questions unanswered, from the historical to urgent matters of current policy: Why, of all the pressing demands of Singapore's newly enfranchised citizens, was housing such a priority back in th...