xeqpuzia65 wrote:
Where is proof HDB double charge--1 charge is x, 2 charge is y ?
Land value 2x?
construction 2x?
selling price 2x?
888 said hdb is affordable if selling price is $100,000.00
give stats and back up your charge 2x by facts.
Ura land tender, if you don't know, is by price bidding and design and completion dates amongst other conditions.
In the sale and purchase of HDB, it is a willing market and +95% of the population owned and stayed in HDB accommodation--don't think they are all stupid or victims of con by Government.
In the case of URA,it is not controlled by Government except land is cleared of squatters or old buildings ; like casino land parcels.
I personally speak with experience of a hotel site being won by public tender promoted by URA--15 bids were received and the best package won.
Do you have first hand experience with URA sites and the terms of tender or you speculate as often to make a point.
How do you know government has no held robust communications with the public--oh, you were not invited.
You have avoided answering how you would do the things your critise yet.
HDB has acquired some of the lands at S$0.10 per square foot. What milton expertise or first-hand experience or knowledge do we need to know about this fact?
It was a statutory board set up with power to acquire lands at cheap prices to provide people with low-cost housing.
The fact is that HDB has now over-built with 10,000 surplus stock with the minister not even knowing much about the problem until Journalist Lee Han Shih wrote an article in the Straits highlighting HDB problems with lack of proper management. Should people be penalised for such errors or should the ministers concerned resign to take responsibility for mismanagement?
That HDB by 1990s has housed 90 % of the population should not have given government the rationale or logic to say that now is the time to start charging the public flats at market price as lands were originally acquired cheap using citizens' taxes and not for the purpose of allowing HDB to make a dirty profit.
Ms Kay of HDB has given very unsatisfactory and unconvincing replies to readers of Straits Times recently who raised the issue of HDB wrongful assumption that it is subsidising its flats correcting HDB's claim that it is subsidising HDB flats by pointing out that HDB was merely giving a trade discount rather subsidy.
HDB officers and minister Mah in the ensuing public debates have totally failed to give fortright honest reply to citizens on their exposed wrongful claim of discount as subsidy. So this is yet another instance of government's failing to engage people in robust argument at all as PM Lee said government will.
In other words, government has now lost leadership standards and leadership quality as it is no longer able to government by laws, logics and reasoning.
A government which has failed to engage its people in rationalizing its policies and practices is no longer a good government.
I hope government will see this defect in the present administration - unable to engage public in debates and logics of reasoning out government policies affecting their housing.
The double-charging on lands of HDB occurs when HDB has acquired lands at dirt-cheap prices using taxations and powers under HDB Act and Land Acquisition Act to do so but quietly, it is selling HDB flats by giving a small discount (which developers are also doing) to look good.
This kind of government is not good government if it charges the lands acquired and paid for and owned by the people at market price.
But when government is meeting challenges by bigger bullies like the souzhou local authority or port palepas, it capitulated all too fast. Where is the moral standard to govern - afraid of bigger outside forces but refuses to relent on wrongs committed against its own people.
HDB should have charged the public housing flats at reasonable prices by using a fairer formula i.e. e.g. (4 room flat at Seng Kang) S$200,000 (Market Price reflecting location) - S$120,000 (Land Cost) - discount (e.g. 35% given by HPL) = S$52,000.
This was what ex-Minister Lim Kim San has done, but Minister Mah Bow Tan appears to be trying to make monies for the government all the time to secure his position.
We cannot keep taxing on housing like this against the people if we want to make our citizens committed to the country.
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