Social policy researcher NG KOK HOE explains how policies on public rental housing and migrant workers are based on a logic of discrimination that denies people’s common humanity. This article is based on his remarks at the “States of Unease” Public Forum.
Like all social policy researchers, I started my career studying how social policies care for people, through housing, pensions and other forms of welfare. I analysed how well policies worked and suggested improvements where I found gaps.
But over time, I came to realise that social policies do not just provide care, they can also be a source of harm. And I do not mean harm that happens because we missed a problem, or don’t know how best to fix it. I mean harm as we intend it — harm as policy design, as policy decision.
Since then, I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the logic and consequences of such policies — how, why and whom they harm. I’ll talk about two examples this evening.
Public rental housing
First, public rental housing . Our stock of HDB rental flats, reserved for poorer people, are old, small and too few. Tenants who are single have to share a one-room flat with another person, typically a stranger. Applicants face a long wait, eligibility is strict and tenures are short. The poor accessibility and quality of rental housing contribute to homelessness.
It took me a while to realise that this is a service they provide, but don’t want you to use. More precisely, it’s a service they don’t want you to want to use. Yes, rental flats provide basic shelter, but they are also a deterrent. In our homeowning society, rental housing policy is designed to dissuade people from renting, and spur tenants towards buying their own flats.
In other words, the poor state of rental housing is not an oversight. Singapore is very good at housing: 80% of households live happily in HDB flats. We would have no problems providing rental flats of good quality if the goal was to meet everyone’s housing needs, including the poorest in our society. But we choose not to — it’s a policy decision.
Migrant domestic workers
I have learnt a lot about our migrant labour policies since I started volunteering with HOME two years ago. Migrant domestic workers are paid about one-tenth of Singaporeans’ median salary and have no independent right to change employers. There are no legal limits on work hours, and abuse and food deprivation happen far too often.
While domestic work is an important livelihood for these workers, and many of them have kind, caring employers, it does not change the fact that our policies leave domestic workers vulnerable. We prioritise employers’ interests instead, by keeping costs to a minimum and giving them as much control as possible.
As a nation that is proudly pro-worker, we know what employment rights are. We know how to protect migrant workers if we wanted to. Again, this is a policy decision.
Recognising the harm
What is the harm?
In both cases, basic needs are not assured. For tenants, these are needs for space, privacy and peace of mind. For domestic workers, it is their needs for job security, fair wages, safety, nutrition and rest. In both cases, rights to decent housing and decent work have been traded off for other objectives, whether to promote home ownership, or to extract care labour at the lowest possible cost. In both cases, policies select a group, a vulnerable group with the least means and therefore the least choice, and confront them with conditions that the rest of society will never accept.
Whenever we trade off basic needs and rights, there is a cost to all of us.
Our rental housing policy teaches everyone that the only way to secure adequate housing is to buy a flat. This creates a lot of anxiety over housing affordability, and a lot of pressure for policymakers. When we mark down the price of domestic work, we create a dependence on it that hampers the development of a self-sufficient care infrastructure. We are now a society that will struggle to care for ourselves without migrant workers. When we devalue migrant care labour, we cheapen all care labour. This is partly why the care work done by family caregivers is so invisible, so taken for granted, and gets so little state support.
There are wider consequences. A two-tier society – where social policy cares for some and harms others – promotes the attitude that people do not have equal worth. When the notion of community, of “we”, is so selective – it is empty.
So, what can we do?
The repair work will require recognising and rejecting policies that harm, and abandoning the strategy of division and discrimination. A good life must begin by respecting our common humanity, and returning our social policies to the role of care, based on principles of equality and solidarity.
– NG KOK HOE is Head of the Social Inclusion Project at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. His research interests include income security, minimum income standards, social housing and care. He led the first nationwide street count of homelessness in Singapore and currently serves as President of HOME.
More by Ng Kok Hoe at AcademiaSG:
- What we now know about inequality in Singapore
- It is internationally recognised as a basic right of workers. Just what is a living wage?
- Housing advocacy in Singapore: Policy research as practising dissent
The entire forum can be viewed on YouTube. For other speakers’ articles, visit the event site.