As one visits Singapore, one is quickly impressed with the amount of towering public housing apartment buildings there are here in the city-State.  Most people here in Singapore refer to such apartments as “HDBs” after the acronym of the Housing Development Board (“HDB”), Singapore’s public housing authority.  The Housing Development Board estimates that “[t]oday, more than 80% of Singapore’s resident population live in HDB flats” (http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10320p.nsf/w/AboutUsHDBHistory?OpenDocument).  The Board touts this as a success story as it notes that “HDB was set up on 1 February 1960, during a housing crisis” and that “[a]t that time, many were living in unhygienic slums and crowded squatter settlements” as “[o]nly 9 percent of Singaporeans lived in government flats” (id).

Indeed, times have changed.  HDB apartments now provide a less expensive alternative to many of the condominiums here, and have fundamentally changed Singapore from the time of slums and unhygenic squatter settlements the Board describes to a city of high-rise living.  Of course, moving skyward may have been necessary to achieving the economic progress Singapore has experienced over the last half-century.  A recent estimate of the population of Singapore set the number at 5.47 million (http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/more-singapore-stories/story/singapore-population-now-547-million-slowest-growth-10-y), and all of those folks have to live somewhere.

HDB may not be the only one deserving credit for the success of HDB apartments here in Singapore, however.  As I was walking in the Bukit Panjang area near the center of Singapore recently, I saw the HDB building pictured above, and at first saw nothing more than a building.  When I looked again, however, I noticed, just as you may in the image here, that just over half-way up the side of the building was a group of HDB painters adding a blue stripe on what would otherwise be a white HDB building side.

It occurred to me that, contrary to what some may tell you, bravery is not dead in the world today.  I imagine that it must take a great deal of courage and skill to hoist oneself and one’s team up and down the side of a high-rise building (I count about 28 floors to this one) to add a bit of color to the lives of those coming back home to it from work during the week.  While the story of HDB construction is one often told as a monumental success of the Housing Development Board’s approach to public housing, I would just like to take this opportunity to recognize the very human effort it takes to make that happen, and to encourage my friends here in Singapore as well as Americans who may visit and stay in the HDB of a Singaporean friend to remember the hard work of those who, like the HDB painters, do a job that we may not recognize at first glance, but that is essential to painting the successful image of public housing all the same.

R