How About Housing Perks For The Middle-Income?

Source : The Straits Times, Wed, Aug 22, 2007

WITH regard to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's National Day Rally speech, I wonder why the Government has not provided housing benefits for middle-income professionals.
The widening income gap does not simply occur between the poorest poor and the richest rich; there is a huge disparity between middle-income earners and the rich as well.

We are young professionals who have been in the workforce for only a few years. We are the middle-income sandwiched group that does not have solid CPF savings, yet we are not entitled to any subsidised housing.

For couples intending to get married, if your combined income exceeds $8,000 or $10,000, tough luck. You are not entitled to housing subsidies as a first-timer, housing grant, living-near-parents grant, or, indeed, any CPF housing loan at all.

My colleague jokingly told me that she might as well quit her high-prospects job so that her income, combined with her fiance's would fall below $8,000.

One of my friends told me the reason he wanted to apply for an HDB flat this year was that his annual increment at the end of the year would have caused him not to enjoy any housing benefits.

While the lower-income earner can purchase a new five-room flat from the Government with the subsidies, grants and minimal loan, the middle-income earner who pays higher income tax has to contend with no subsidies and grants, higher loan from commercial banks and a 25-year-old flat sold at $50,000 above valuation.

Middle-income earners are not seeking housing benefits to the extent that the poor and needy are entitled to but the Government should consider making the policies a tad less stringent to provide for the needs of this section of the populace. We are supposedly 'too rich' for public housing but we are too poor for private properties.

Bernice Swee Wern Foong (Ms)