Singapore Oldest Public Housing

[Cecil Lee]

In Singapore, there are currently around 3,000 first generation Government built publich housing flat units in various parts of Singapore:
1. The Tiong Bahru area (with flats scattered along River Valley and Kim Tian Road.
2. Katong and Geyang district.
3. The leases to the flat units were registered during the 1950s and 1960s before the Land Titles (Strata) Act came into force in 1968.
4. Since the 1960s, over 95 percent of the entire Singapore population is housed in Government Public Housing.
5. Today, this figure is roughly around 85 percent of the total population housed in Government Public housing. The difference is that majority live in specific Block of flats usually between 14 storeys to 25 storey high.
6. Some new Public Housing near located near to the Central business district will be as high as 30 storeys or more.
7. Here are some photos of the first ever built Government Housing flats.
These flats are considered of low height - a far cry from the current `cluttered' high rise apartments.
Some of these flats are tastefully renovated - instead of being torn down for re-development. There are few if any of such Public Housing left in Singapore.

[Cecil Lee]

Further to the above, the earlier pictures shows the Public Housing built in the 1950's.
This lot of picture shows the Public Housing built around a decade later i.e. 1960's. This set of flats may most probably make way or demolished for new higher density development as they are not as considered as "beautiful" or worth conserving as the earlier batch built in the 1950's.
The characteristic of such flats is the uneven cement walls, showing the profile of laid bricks. Furthermore, these bricks are not made of the usual red clay bricks. But rather, they were made with low quality hollow lightweight cement bricks.