The heteronormativity of Singapore’s public housing

Joelle Hung

In Singapore, public housing remains largely exclusionary, targeted towards those living in a nuclear family unit. In this essay, I intend to deconstruct how traditional understandings of family, kinship and home shape the spaces in which we inhabit, situating this within the context of Singapore’s postcolonial nation-building project. I examine how the combination of state policies and the internal configuration of HDB (Housing Development Board) apartments produces fundamentally gendered and heternormative spaces. In essence, I intend to bring attention to the relationship between state governance, citizenship and architecture, exploring how socio-cultural norms are reproduced within the built environment.

“Architecture anticipates ways of living in the spaces we rent or buy, presumes conventions of living that are literally built into the structures we dwell in. Unless you own property and have some degree of wealth, you can’t really change the shape of it; you simply find ways to live in the spaces you can afford, in the shapes that are already preconfigured and set in stone.” - Julietta Singh (2021:58)

In her epistolary memoir The Breaks, Julietta Singh writes to her daughter about her desire to envision a radically different future amidst our world’s current crises. In one section, she muses on queer family-making and her experiences parenting as a queer woman with an asexual partner in a largely heteronormative society. She discusses how heteropatriarchal conventions and histories are embedded within our living spaces and how the layout of apartments map out our activities. By assigning certain functions to spaces, it limits the possibilities for ‘queering’ or transgressing the purported functionalities of these neatly demarcated spaces (Ahmed, 2019). 

Inspired by this proposition for ‘queer architecture’, I attempt to deconstruct heteronormative structures of kinship and home, understand how traditional understandings of the family shape the spaces in which we inhabit. This raises questions around how our living spaces reflect or reproduce socio-cultural norms. I seek to explore how this plays out in Singapore where the domestic sphere is closely intertwined with state family policies and the provision of public housing by the Housing Development Board (HDB) (Oswin, 2019; Teo, 2011a). 

As of 2020, over 78 percent of Singapore’s population live in an HDB (DOS, 2021). While the mass majority of citizens reside in public housing, access to HDB flats remains exclusionary, limited to Singaporean citizens over the age of 21 who form a “proper family nucleus”; one which is heterosexual and bound by marriage (HDB, 2021a). Single individuals are unable to purchase an HDB flat until the age of 35 if they are “unmarried or divorced” disadvantaging those who do not fit within normative kinship structures such as LGBTQ+ individuals, single mothers, and migrant workers (HDB, 2021; Oswin, 2019; Tang and Quah, 2017; Ramdas, 2012). Thus, in their venture to craft an ideal citizen to fulfil the socio-economic needs of the city-state, Singapore’s restrictive definition of the ‘family’ creates a highly exclusionary national imaginary, with the family lauded as “the basic building block of society” by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (Oswin 2010). So, this topic is especially pertinent given that the institution of the family and regulation of the intimate sphere is deeply entrenched within the city-state’s nation-building project. 

Buchli (2013:120) highlights an omission in literature concerning the anthropology of the home as it creates a false binary between “built form and lived experience, the shell and its contents”. Rather than ascribing to a paradigm of dominance and resistance which further dichotomises the state and the individual (Buchli, 2013), I intend to demonstrate the porosity of the purportedly separate private and public spheres in examining the interconnections between housing, citizenship, and the institution of the family. Thus, I will be interrogating the relationship between housing policies at the macro-level of the city-state which feed into the “conventions of living” that are embedded within the micro-level of the HDB interior (Singh, 2021: 58). Centrally, I seek to understand how the provision and configuration of Singapore’s HDB flats reflect and reproduce the city-state’s socio-cultural norms. Therefore, I will be exploring 1) How conventional understandings of the family have shaped the provision of HDBs through state policies, and 2) How the interior reflects Singapore’s construction of the ideal family nucleus. 

First, I will provide a brief contextual and historical overview of Singapore’s development from the colonial and pre-independence era chronicling the change in spaces of dwelling to the transformation of the family. Here, I proceed with a discussion of my theoretical framework which covers both heteronormativity and the family which is central to queer geographies and the anthropology and geographies of the home. Lastly, I will apply these ideas to two examples, one of which is a standard 4-room HDB and second, a Three-Generation HDB and examine associated state policies and schemes. 

Historical Context: Building of HDBs post-independence by PAP 

The state’s biopolitical project can be traced from the transition period between Singapore under British Colonial rule and Singapore as a post-colony in the present (Goh, 2015). Singapore’s rise post-independence led by the People’s Action Party (PAP) placed Singapore into an economically beneficial position within the global economy, which justified repression of political dissent and the enforcement of social control over the population through state governance (Oswin, 2020). Following Singapore’s independence in 1965, the state carried out slum clearances which eradicated vernacular architecture and communal living spaces such as Kampungs, which were seen as ‘unsanitary’ and overcrowded and were prone to widespread fires (Mano, 2021). The state mobilized a rhetoric of ‘emergency’ and ‘crises’ to convey a sense of urgency and justify the use of ‘exceptional powers’ to carry out land seizures to construct new HDBs (Clancey, 2003). Changes in the Land Acquisition Act in 1966 was central to Singapore’s mass provision of public housing as it allowed for the decommodification of land and for the state to acquire most of the land in Singapore (Chua, 2000). The construction of these modernist housing blocks was justified not as an aesthetic choice but a pragmatic one (Jacobs and Cairns, 2008). While there were notable problems with modernist housing blocks in other regions such as the UK, the state imposed regulatory interventions to monitor the activities and values of tenants as a ‘preventative measure’ (Jacobs and Cairns, 2008). 

Applying the work of Agamben, Goh (2015:220) argues that the resettlement of residents into HDBs “[reduced] communities to bare life” housing them into homogenous units which, in turn, bred conformity. The introduction of HBDs consigned inhabitants into smaller spaces designed as nuclear family units, which eroded large community ties and alternative kinship arrangements (Mano, 2021). The interior configuration of the HDBs served as a means for the state to exert biopolitical control and achieve its political targets by promoting a set of ideals for family size and structure (Chee, 2013). This was coupled with anti-natalist policies and incentivisation, such as better housing allocations preferences for smaller families (Chee, 2013). Here, housing becomes an “ideological instrument of the state”, a means to closely manage the lives of its inhabitants and mould them into ideal citizens (Chee, 2017:37). Singapore’s state intervention into the lives of its citizens exemplifies a blurring of boundaries between ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres (Sheller and Urry, 2003).

The long-running success of HDBs can also be attributed to the Homeownership for the People Scheme which was implemented in 1964, which enabled the purchase of HDB flats on 99 year leaseholds (Jacobs and Cairns, 2008). The accompanying Central Provident Fund (CPF) required citizens to submit 20% of their salary into a fund, a percentage of which will be subsidized by the government, enabling a larger number of citizens to afford their own homes regardless of income (Chua, 2000). As of 2021, 87.9% of households in Singapore are owner occupied (HDB, 2021). While this was largely beneficial, the increased dependency on the state for housing entrapped both citizens and the state further into this arrangement (Chua, 2000). The government often propagated the descriptors “back then and right now, uncivilized and civilized, premodern and modern” to demarcate an era pre- and post-independence, the former consigned to a time prior to the intervention of the PAP (Jacobs and Cairns, 2008: 577). Thus, we can see how Singapore’s paternalistic ideology becomes calcified within state governance and expressed through housing provision that extends to the present day (Chua, 2000).

Singapore makes for an interesting case study as one of the “Four Asian Tigers”, whose strong economies were the product of rapid industrialisation and overseas investment (Goh, 2015). So, while Singapore prides itself in being a global city, an economically liberal city-state, the fixation on its economic achievements obscures how Singapore lags in some social areas (Oswin, 2019). However, it remains distinct given its public housing model vastly differs from other ‘Asian Tigers’ such as Hong Kong, whose financialisation of housing mirrors other cities in the global North such as London where the private housing market plays a larger role in determining the public housing provisioning (Jacobs and Cairns, 2008). 

Theoretical framework

From the propagation of pro-natalist policies due to Singapore’s aging population and falling birth-rate (Teo, 2010a), to the crisis of social reproduction during the COVID-19 pandemic whereby those who do not form a nuclear family apparatus were prevented from accessing adequate care outside their ‘family bubble’ (Mano, 2021), the family unit becomes an especially pertinent area of study to understand Singapore’s current predicament. Through a queer and gendered lens, we can see that heteronormative housing policies and social norms hold wider implications beyond Singapore’s LGBTQ+ population, so I intend to use a subjectless critique to explore its reverberations (Oswin, 2020). In this section, I will be exploring the concepts around heteronormativity and the family, and end with a discussion of the anthropology and geographies of housing.

Heteronormativity, the family and intimate citizenship 

Heteronormativity is defined as an institutionalization and normalization of certain ideas about sexuality (Hubbard, 2008). This is tied to what Roseneil et al. (2020:4) term the ‘couple-norm’, the discursive construction of the convention of the couple “is institutionalized, supported and mandated by a plethora of legal regulations, social policies and institutions, cultural traditions and everyday practices”. Applying the idea to Singapore, we can similarly see how laws and policies have continually reified coupledom and the nuclear family apparatus as one which “defines what it is to be a citizen” (Roseneil et al., 2020:3). Those who deviate from normative temporal logics - the intended trajectory from birth to death with milestones such as marriage and having children, instead become ‘non-reproductive agents’ aligning with queer temporalities (Ahmed, 2019; Halberstam, 2005). Reproductive futurism is used to propel “future oriented developmental logic”; an insistence that the future is tied to the figure of the child (Oswin, 2012: 1625). This idea is used to reinforce the importance of the heteronormative family to carry out the biological reproduction of future workers as an institution to which the economic success of Singapore depends on (Goh, 2015; Oswin, 2019). 

Wilkinson (2020) proposes to instead, look beyond the family and understand the ‘geographies of intimacy’ and ‘non-reproduction’.  Intimate citizenship differs from sexual citizenship in that it is more inclusive of those who deviate from the orientation of a heterosexual life (Wilkinson, 2020). In the case of the UK, there have been studies on the relationship between the institution of the nuclear family, the welfare state and modernity (see Koch, 2018). Similarly in Singapore, the production of familial norms allows the state to exert power to govern its citizens, while simultaneously reducing burden on the state to provide public goods and services since social reproductive work is offloaded to families due to absence of a welfare state (Teo, 2010a). As outlined, the couple-norm is legitimized by the Singaporean state through the provision of HDBs, which exemplifies how housing acts as a bridge between the citizens and the state. 

In tracing the relationship between the role of the state in shaping familial ideals in East and South-East Asia, Teo (2010b) points out how the institution of the family is purported to need state protection from global influences accompanying industrialisation and urban development. Regionally, filial piety is constructed to be an ‘Asian value’ to proffer the idea of familial duty and sacrifice which emerged from Confucius thought (Teo, 2010b). Given the shifting socio-cultural norms accompanying the region’s economic transformations, there is a need to reconsider the centrality of filial piety in Singapore which will be discussed in the latter section (Chee and Seng, 2017). So, while there are regional similarities, there is a need to acknowledge that Asia is not a homogenous entity and is shaped by local histories and cultural specificities (Chen, 2010). 

Anthropology and geographies of housing 

Anthropologists seek to view the home as an “outcome of ongoing relationships''; a constant process of making and unmaking (Lucas, 2020: 45). The home becomes a site where identities are negotiated and the self is formed (Buchli, 2014). Similarly, feminists working on the critical geographies of the home seek to distinguish between the understanding of home as an anchor to one’s identity and the home as a place of dwelling (Pratt, 1999). Moreover, homemaking can be associated with identity formation and the preservation of culture (Young, 1997). The home is always a space which is constructed relative to the outside, whereby one has the right to expel the Other from the private sphere, thus the notion of ‘home’ is often criticized for reproducing exclusionary identity politics (Young, 1997). 

Bringing it back to the work of Levi-Strauss, the space of the home is also tied to broader structures and social relations (in Lucas, 2020). While scholarship on domestic interiors in the West often emphasizes the dialectic between the self and the home, state policies in Singapore may end up eradicating the possibility of self-hood due to the state’s role in taste-making and home consumption to craft a shared national identity (Chee, 2013). Rather, Singapore becomes “a negotiated modernity” (Koolhaas in Chee, 2013: 206). For instance, the distribution of magazine Our Home by the HDB board during the era of rebuilding was used to promote an affinity for certain ideals and tastes, from home decor to household appliances, crafting an imagined community (Jacobs and Cairns, 2008). Here, the home can be seen as a way of enforcing state rule and social order, demonstrating the porosity of the private sphere which was historically designated as a space that is unregulatable or ungovernable by the public (Young, 1997). 

Discussion: Distribution and internal configuration of HDB flats 

In this section, I will be delving into two examples of HDB interiors, the 4-room HDB and the Three-Gen HDB in relation to policies that are associated with these specific layouts. First, I will be prefacing with a brief overview of how HDBs are rolled out in Singapore. HDBs can be purchased as a new Built to Order (BTO) flat, or can be bought on the resale market, which may include apartments build prior to the 2000s (HDB, 2021a). This is notable as the standardization of apartment layouts can be linked to the construction method of HDBs which has slightly shifted over the years (Chee, 2013). Currently, HDBs are built using a pre-fabrication construction method which largely standardizes the size of certain rooms to optimize construction (HDB,2021d). Centrally, in tracking the changes in HDB layouts from the 1970s and 2020s, we can see slight shifts over the years to reflect demographic changes such as a decrease in household size and the lifestyle needs of inhabitants which has produced a slightly smaller kitchen and larger bedroom (Mungal et al., 2021). Moreover, we can see a slight variation in layout of homes to newer models of HDB flats such as the Three-Gen flat which will be discussed below. 

4-room HDBs 

HDB flats come in several different formats, the most common option being the 4-room HDB which houses one third of Singapore’s households living in HDBs (HDB, 2021). The arrangement of the apartment is fairly standard across housing estates. As shown in figure 2, the 4-room HDB flats come with one master bedroom, two other bedrooms, a shared bathroom, a living room, kitchen, service yard and a storage room (HDB, 2021c). 

The standardization of housing and apartment layouts arguably standardized the ideal citizen, creating a homogenous national body shaped around the ideas of the nuclear family (Goh, 2015).   Extending Foucault’s work, Preciado (2012) argues that the built environment reflects gendered, racialised and heteronormative norms; architecture which can enforce biopolitical control. As Colombina (1992) identifies, the user can be directed by the architect through the physical arrangement of space. Here, we can infer that the layout of the home is fundamentally gendered, arranged according to the domestic rituals to be undertaken within these spaces (Chee, 2013). For example, the idea of the main bedroom, or master bedroom, is connoted as being for a couple (Heynen, 2005) and the layout can facilitate and reflect the everyday patterns of families (Heynen, 2005; Chee, 2013). 

In a study, Chee (2013) identifies how the combination of policies and architectural layout of the HDB becomes an impetus for biological reproduction, exemplifying how reproductive futurist ideology comes to the fore. For example, the meticulously planned out spaces of the HDB interior were viewed in opposition to the public exterior of the void decks and corridors which were manufactured spaces of conviviality, as these interior spaces allowed inhabitants to carry out private activities that were to remain hidden from public view (Chee, 2013). This echoes work on the critical geographies of the home by feminist geographers on how the binary between public and private, inside and outside are reinforced by the construction of the Other (Blunt and Dowling, 2006). Here, within the confines of the domestic, one's societal function is fulfilled and is being articulated architecturally. Thus, arguably seen as an extension of the state, the HDB exemplifies how power attaches itself to the architectural form, shaping a new disciplinary society (Preciado, 2012). 

Additionally, in October 2021, the Prime Location Public Housing (PLH) model was introduced to mitigate the effects of the lottery effect of housing, in which some allocated housing locations have a greater resale value if they were in a central location with caps such as shorter minimum occupancy periods and lower subsidies (HDB, 2021b). However, singles over 35+ who are eligible for either a single or joint housing scheme are not eligible to apply to HDBs located in prime locations, instead the HDB decides to prioritize families (Ng, 2021) The applicant must form an “eligible family nucleus” which must be made up of either 1) spouse and children, 2) parents and siblings or 3) children under legal custody (HDB, 2021a). Here, the couple-norm is in full effect, where state policies propagate their views on the ideal family structure through restricting alternatives. HDB intends to appeal to young couples buying their first flat through first-timer schemes with priority benefits, making coupledom appear to be the only choice for them (HDB, 2021b).

Three-Generation HDBs 

Going back to the idea of social reproduction, capitalism is often predicated on the division of labour within a heteronormative family whereby the man is the ‘breadwinner’ and the woman acts as a ‘homemaker’ who carries out unpaid social reproductive labour (Sears, 2017). In other words, the heterosexual nuclear family unit is tied to the formation of specific gender roles within the private sphere. In the case of Singapore, social reproductive work such as childcare is often privatized and outsourced through the hiring of foreign domestic helpers or with the help of grandparents (Mehta and Leng, 2008). Three-Generation HDBs, propose a living arrangement, still tied to biological kinship, whereby a new couple lives with their parents, expanding the single-family house to one which accommodates an extended family. This arrangement allows grandparents to care for children and the couple to care for aging parents. The apartment has 4 bedrooms, 2 of which are master bedrooms, a shared bathroom, living room, kitchen, service yard and household shelter (HDB, 2021c). As shown in Figure 3, the two master bedrooms are located on the opposite end of the apartment which offer some semblance of privacy for each family unit, while living within the same apartment. 

In addition, the Proximity Housing Grant was introduced as an incentive if the home buyer decides to live with their parents or within 4km of their parents, with the former option amounting to a larger grant of $30,000 SGD and the latter $20,000 SGD (HDB, 2021e). Here, we can see that filial piety still plays a large role in state policies to promote multi-generational support which consigns work to the single or extended family unit rather than the state (Mehta and Leng, 2008). So, while it is expanded to the extended family, these structures remain tied to the valorisation of the heterosexual nuclear family model, albeit one which is intergenerational, thereby reflecting and reinforcing Singapore’s social-cultural norms. Here, we can see that architectural layouts, policies, and social-cultural norms, in this case filial piety, work hand in hand to reify the nuclear family and heterosexual couple. 

Conclusion

To conclude, through the focus on housing, we can see the linkages between state governance, citizenship, and socio-cultural areas. Heteronormative ideals are shown to play a significant role in shaping the private lives of citizens through the state policies and the roll out of public housing in Singapore’s post-independence era. Singapore’s current predicament is inseparable from the city-state’s colonial past and desire to flourish economically, which lead to a transformation of family structures and obliterated larger kinship models. In other words, the patriarchal authoritarianism of Singapore’s PAP viewed the nuclear household model as an integral component of social stability which allowed the state to exert control over its citizens. Singapore’s national imaginary thus became inseparable from the heterosexual couple-norm; emblematic of a Singapore that is “made for families” (NPTD, 2021). 

HDBs can be seen as a physical manifestation of Singapore’s socio-spatial relations and socio-cultural norms. Our built environment cannot be separated from the governance of urban life as buildings can embody larger political endeavours. Here we can see the conscious and unconscious enactment of intimate citizenship and the couple norm, playing out within the spaces of the home (Roseneil et al., 2020). From the discussion, we can see how different housing schemes prioritize the nuclear family and the internal configuration feeds into one another. The inconspicuous state management bleeds into the architectural form, eroding the purported dichotomy between the public and private. 

As the home is a microcosm of power relations of both internal and external forces, it simultaneously is a site where heteropatriarchal norms are reproduced or challenged. Thus, this study could be extended further to look at how both single inhabitants and non-conventional families queer the heteronormativity of home through the appropriation and the use of material goods. As Julietta Singh (2012:58) proposes: “by pure necessity or needful desire, some of us make a craft of playing with these fields, subverting architectural presumptions by living in and against them otherwise.” The decoupling of the public and private division can also be tied to the idea of family abolition, as not a proposition for the negation of family, but a reorientation towards new and transformative possibilities for more expansive infrastructures of care and other forms of social relations which are not dependent on biological ties (Wilkinson, 2020). In Singapore, where the ideological becomes institutionalized, there is a need to reconfigure social spatial relations as a “practice of biopolitical disobedience” and reimagine ways of urban living that do not align with reproductive futurism (Preciado, 2012:121). 

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