Singapore - the power of home ownership
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Imagine a country with 90 percent homeownership. Imagine what it would mean to have a society with that rate of homeownership – with that high a level of security and wealth accumulation.
That’s exactly what Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister did. Although educated in economics and law at University, Lee Kuan Yew noticed as a child the differences between neighborhoods dominated by homeownership versus those that were mostly rented. Cleanliness, stability and low crime rates were among the benefits of an owned neighborhood.
In 1965 when Singapore declared its independence both from the Malaysian Federation from which it was ejected and from the United Kingdom from which it was being decolonized, Singapore had a roughly 27 percent homeownership rate. Shockingly low.
Why?
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/08/lessons-from-singapore-the-power-of-homeownership.html?
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Imagine a country with 90 percent homeownership. Imagine what it would mean to have a society with that rate of homeownership – with that high a level of security and wealth accumulation.
That’s exactly what Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister did. Although educated in economics and law at University, Lee Kuan Yew noticed as a child the differences between neighborhoods dominated by homeownership versus those that were mostly rented. Cleanliness, stability and low crime rates were among the benefits of an owned neighborhood.
In 1965 when Singapore declared its independence both from the Malaysian Federation from which it was ejected and from the United Kingdom from which it was being decolonized, Singapore had a roughly 27 percent homeownership rate. Shockingly low.
Why?
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/08/lessons-from-singapore-the-power-of-homeownership.html?
Good stuff!
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I wouldn't be too quick to emulate Singapore. I don't think the government control of the civil society would go down very well in the USA.
A better model for promoting homeownership is the one that was created after WWII and that contributed substantially to that earlier peak by the 1960s, namely the GI bill and the VA home loan program. The benefits that accrued to our entire society from the actions taken after the war to support our returning servicemen are nearly incalculable, but in my opinion, were a large factor in the rise of the middle class during the years after the war and through the 1950s.
Big Al
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I think a more even distribution of wealth is a good thing, and more ubiquitous “home ownership” is just one of many means to get there.
Indeed the degree of authoritarianism commonly associated with the Singaporean government will likely not go down well in the USA. As for the rise of the middle class must after WWII, part of that is also because a lot of wealth has been destroyed by the world war. So having a thinned out “upper class” also made it easier for the “middle class” to emerge — not having as big of an “upper class” sucking up the peace dividend allows more of it to be distributed to the masses.
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And certainly the U.S. could do more to facilitate homeownership without adopting other things done in Singapore.
Separate from the issue of homeownership and finances, the observation about differences between neighborhoods with mostly owner-occupied houses versus those with mostly rentals certainly fits my experience. The neighborhood where we bought our house in 2019 was sort of mixed, maybe slightly more than half of the homes were rentals. We used to talk to our neighbor (another home owner) about it, and you could easily tell which houses were rentals because the upkeep just wasn’t the same. In that state it was very easy to check the county tax assessor website to see if a house was taxed as a rental or not, and I checked at one point and the tax information confirmed what my eyes were telling me.
In the neighborhood where our new house is, here in our new state, the county tax assessor website is set up differently so the last time I looked, I couldn’t really tell (I am probably just looking at it wrong). But I think most of the houses here are owner occupied, and certainly all of my immediate neighbors are owners based on discussions with them etc. And again, it looks that way — the houses are well-cared for, the lawns and general upkeep are better. It makes a huge difference in the look and feel of the neighborhood.
