Source : The Straits Times, Mar 20, 2008
WITH reference to Ms Susan Prior’s letter on Monday (’ Enbloc sales eroding our ’sense of kampung’), I wish to point out that in a kampung, you can walk up to a neighbour’s home and peer through the open door and windows to strike up a conversation.
It is a place where children can run from one house to another and where one can take temporary shelter when caught in a sudden downpour.
Can you duplicate this openness and fraternity in large, multi-storey private housing estates like Gillman Heights and Bayshore Park where closed doors, grilled gates and windows with drawn curtains are the norm? Obviously not.
The kampung era is long gone. The world has moved on. An enbloc development allows old estates to be redeveloped and not degenerate into slums like in many other countries.
It is a better alternative than the compulsory acquisitions during those kampung days, when compensations were a pittance.
Also, one should move out of this kampung mentality and learn to make new friends while keeping the old.
This sense of kampung being eroded by enbloc sales is being overplayed by a dissenting few. The fact that the majority are willing to sell says much - that many are no longer enamoured of this kampung sentiment.
Lau Chee Kian
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En-bloc sales: Be sensitive to each other
Source : The Straits Times, Mar 25, 2008
I REFER to Mr Lau Chee Kian’s letter on Thursday, ‘Sense of kampong in condos overstated’. It is indeed true that the ‘true kampong spirit’ exists only among a very insignificant percentage of our population. The Government has in fact tried to keep this friendliness alive, and we see some results.
I have personally been to condos where neighbours hardly know each other. They sail past each other like ships at sea, in some cases, it’s just simple greetings but they hardly know anything about their neighbours’ lives, which many guard like family heirlooms. I perfectly understand that there will be people who love their homes for their location, friends, or hold on to their homes as they hold great sentimental value.
En-bloc sales at least give you some compensation, though for the minority who oppose it, it is of no consequence. But to this ‘minority’ who consider themselves unfortunate victims of their neighbours’ fancy or greed, I would appeal to them to focus on the positives rather than the negatives … and respect the views of the majority, rather than accuse them of wrongdoing. To the majority, who may be for an en-bloc sale, I would say, be sensitive to the minority and explain your stand with love and understanding, rather than look at them as ‘thorns in the flesh’. Who knows, you may soon win them over.
In fact, sometimes, it’s in times of an en-bloc ‘crisis’ that neighbours actually try to strike up a conversation and try to rally for support. It brings them together. Friendships should be forged in normal ‘peace times’ so that in times of ‘war’ you can at least make your stand as a friend and not as an enemy.
Patricia Stephen (Mrs)
Condo Spirit Better Than HDB’s
Source : The Straits Times, Mar 29, 2008
MS SUSAN Prior’s letter, ‘En bloc sales eroding our sense of kampung’ (March 17), about the sense of kampung in condominiums is certainly not overstated. The kampung spirit in condominiums is very much better than in HDB estates where residents hardly interact with each other.
In fact, all en-bloc sales are motivated by greed, worsened by en-bloc speculators who hope to make quick profits by flipping the properties without any feelings for the residents who do not want to sell. It is a load of rubbish to say that enbloc is good for rejuvenation of an estate. In this regard, I would suggest that the Government raise the percentage of approval required from the present 80 per cent to 90 per cent in order to protect the interests of the minority owners.
William Tay Kay Chiak
En-Bloc Properties Hardly Slums
Source : The Straits Times, Mar 29, 2008
IN HIS letter, ‘Sense of kampung in condos overstated’ (March 20), Mr Lau Chee Kian warned that ‘old estates’ could ‘degenerate into slums like in many countries’. Nassim Park was only 14 years old when it went en bloc although it was in very good condition.
Horizon Hill Towers, the subject of the long running and costly acrimonious dispute now being heard in the High Court, is in pristine condition even though it is older than Nassim Park. Cavenagh Gardens in Cavenagh Road was built in the early 1960s whereas Pacific Mansion in the River Valley area and built slightly later are now around 45 years old and can hardly be considered slums by any standard, being in much better condition than some of the HDB flats only about 20 years old.
Whether an estate would turn into a slum is more dependent on the maintenance rather than age, as the many examples in China, India, Europe and others where some of the buildings are centuries old, have shown. ‘The fact that the majority are willing to sell’ needs not and does not justify the compulsory sale by dissenting subsidiary proprietors, as the former’s decision could have been misconceived, ill advised, wrongly influenced, etc, and, as it is, turned out to be wrong, because in most cases the price they sold was too low. Dispute, acrimony and ruined lives could have been avoided from the beginning if all those concerned had faced up to the root causes and inherent deficiencies faced in most management corporations.
Bin Hee Heng
No Regrets: En-Bloc Buyers, That Is
Source : The Straits Times, Mar 29, 2008
I REFER to Mr Lau Chee Kian’s ‘Sense of kampung in condos overstated’ (March 20) in response to Ms Susan Prior’s ‘En-bloc sales eroding our sense of kampung’ (March17). In almost all en-bloc sales, most owners wished they had not sold their homes because they realised too late.
Has no property developer, who has made purchases in hundreds of en-bloc sales so far, ever regretted its land-banking? For confirmation, we should hear from a horse’s mouth, as reported in the Business Times on Nov 15 last year, ‘S’pore home price gains set to slow’: ‘Mr Lim Ee Seng, chief executive officer of Frasers Centrepoint Group, one of the biggest buyers in en-bloc sales, says: ‘We are still looking to boost our land bank, but we are opportunistic and won’t pay current values because our costs would be too high.’ The price gain has helped the developer on earlier purchases of existing apartments, which are sold at a profit. An example is the St Thomas Suites development in the city’s downtown, where apartments were recently sold at $2,189 a square foot. ‘We bought the site of St Thomas Suites at $600 per square foot,’ said Mr Lim in the report. That’s a whopping 365 per cent profit that the Frasers Centrepoint Group has made. That’s why, with their ‘paltry windfall’, the majority owners will never be able to buy a replacement unit. Sad to say, they must regret and downgrade.
Mr Lau rightly points out: ‘The kampung era is long gone. The world has moved on.’ The tremendous advances in science and technology have transformed our way of life altogether, chief of which is changing us from a caring into an impersonal society. Fortunately, Singapore has led in the field of preserving our cultural heritage from being eroded by these negative influences. Singapore has, by and large, succeeded in preserving our core values shared by all in our multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural society. And the ’sense of kampung’ embodied in our core values is part and parcel of our rich cultural heritage.
Admittedly, it is an uphill task to mobilise every Singaporean to imbibe the kampung spirit of yesteryear, but it is not an impossible task. The majority owners in an en-bloc sale cannot be regarded as a litmus test of their view on the ’sense of kampung’. Our uniquely Singapore has, against all odds, managed to accomplish almost everything that we have set our hearts and minds to do - most difficult of all is in uniting a people as pluralistic as Singapore into an almost homogenous nation in just 42 years. And it is a matter of time before the long and tedious process of re-moulding our people into this tremendous sense of kampung camaraderie bear fruits. Succeed we will.
Han Soon Juan
Germany
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