En blocs Creating Rifts in Neighbourliness

Now that the MinLaw Public Consultation is over, I've been slowly getting back into updating the blog. The En-bloc List is updated as usual, and I'll be abstracting parts of the letter I wrote to MinLaw onto the blog when time allows.

In the meantime, an article in the oddest of places in the Straits Times - Mind Your Body - talked about the issue of neighbourliness. Written by Sharon Loh, it points to the issue of strong bonds and long-term ties by people who stay in the same neighbourhood for years. What en blocs seem to have done, and Sharon rightly pointed this out, is to not only create rifts among neighbours (ugly rifts at times between majority and minority owners), but also to remove the need to be neighbourly, particularly when (a) some people don't even stay in the estates but rent them out (owner-investors), (b) you anticipate moving out in 10 years when the enbloc consensus becomes more tenable at 80%. Social relations is often the glue of any nation, but what is en-blocs doing to middle-class Singapore, when it is forcing a large number of citizens to relocate? This relates to one of the myths I have written, about the need to consider social stakes in any en bloc process.


Love thy neighbour
By SHARON LOH
MIND YOUR BODY - IN THE KNOW
Straits Times 16 May 2007

Recent events have been making me think about neighbourly ties, never as strong since high-rise dwellings replaced kampungs, apparently.

More than the reports of warring neighbours in court, I am disturbed by the rash of collective sales, some of them acrimonious. It is tyranny of the majority - neighbours forcing neighbours to sell their homes.

Are our homes merely financial assets? If they have no emotional ties, we are in trouble.

I thought another sign of trouble was the story of an elderly woman who fell in her kitchen and lay there for two days before neighbours noticed she had not left her house.

But that turned out to be a story of good neighbours. Once the alarm was raised, a group of them swung into action to make sure she was all right.

Maybe all good neighbours are not lost. I have been the recipient of many quiet acts of kindness from my own, most of whom, I am ashamed to say, I still barely know.

What is neighbourliness?

According to a paper by UK think-tank Smith Institute, it is not 'heroic forms of help and support' but 'small and unremarkable actions and behaviour that give people a sense that they are secure and at home in their own places'.

Neighbours do not need to be best friends. Keeping an eye on each other's property, exchanging greetings and not making too much noise late at night are small things we can do for each other.

Perhaps neighbourliness has receded because we are no longer so reliant on one another. My mother had to ask the family next door to keep a watchful eye on me and my brother when she went to work because none of our nannies would stay.

These days, with many more resources, there is much less need to go next door for help.

But as the population ages, that proximity will become important. More than anyone else, elderly people who live alone and are no longer as mobile as before, need their neighbours.

Neighbourliness is a balance of reciprocity and altruism. People look out for each other not only because they expect the same in return but also because they gain satisfaction from knowing they can help. Old people do not want to be dependent on others, but interdependent.

How can we promote neighbourliness? One correlation is age and length of residence. Older neighbourhoods tend to have stronger bonds, so perhaps we should work on long-term ties.

In the end, though, a good neighbour is something we choose to be.

I hope more of us will choose it. Welfare groups say that people, especially the elderly poor, are falling through the cracks because they do not know where to get help.

Government and welfare agencies can do only so much. We are each other's eyes and ears.
sharonl@sph.com.sg

Tags: neighbourliness, neighours, neighborliness, Enbloccing Singapore, Enblocing Singapore, Enblocking Singapore, collective sale, property, enbloc sale, enbloc, en-bloc sale, en-bloc, en bloc, condo, collective sales, real estate, singapore

Myth #3 - Ownership and Equal Rights

Let's begin with a test of your knowledge on election knowledge. Let's say you're the People's Action Party (PAP) and it's General Election Year. You are an MP in a single-seat constituency and that constituency comprises of 50% Singaporeans and 50% Permanent Residents and Foreigners. Does the law allow permanent residents and foreigners to vote during the General Election?

No. Only Singaporean citizens can vote during the General Election.

Why is it that only citizens have voting rights? According to an article in Electoral Studies (2001), Blais et al* pointed out that 48 out of 63 countries (democracies) have included a clause that limits voting to citizens only. The restriction is based on the notion of community membership and having a personal stake at the votes :

"Before being allowed to vote, one should be fully integrated in the society he or she lives in. Recently arrived immigrants may be presumed to be less familiar with the issues.. Some find shocking that recent immigrants .. might prevent the majority of citizens of long standing from getting what they want" (Blais et al 2001: 52).

I draw the analogy between voting rights for General Election and voting rights for Collective Sale because both have to be seen in terms of community membership and the personal stakes involved, rather than just purely financial stakes. By 'personal stakes' I mean those subsidiary proprietors (SPs) who own a unit in the property, and have been staying there for a substantial amount of time (eg 6 years or more). For these SPs, which I call 'owners', they have formed social attachments to the place - they are familiar with the surroundings, enjoy the various conveniences in the area, have formed social networks with neighbours, with retailers etc, have children who go to school in the area etc. They have a substantial personal stake in the collective sale because if they move, they lose all these social attachments. For them, 'home' is not just a financial value, a profit from the en-bloc sale (although to some it can be that); to owners 'home' is a place they find sustenance in familiarity and where they find a sense of community - a nurturing of their social being. A person who moves too often very quickly loses any sense of attachment to place; 'home' becomes an empty void, just an address to reside in until the next move.

Investors, the other group of SPs, intent on selling their units for a profit, call this 'sentimentality'. They cannot understand why people would NOT want to sell for a large profit, and yes, it is very likely that if their own home (not the invested unit) could be sold for a tidy profit, they'd upheave and move elsewhere. No attachment, no social sense, no obligation to anyone but themselves and their profit margins. The investors are similar to non-citizens, people who have decided not to take up citizenship and create attachment to the place.

And yet, these non-citizen investors have the same equal rights to decide the fate of the property as the "citizens of long standing" owners.

There is a fatal flaw in the definition of ownership in en-bloc sales. Any collective property should be seen as a 'mini democracy', one where more voting rights should be accorded to those with community membership and personal stakes, and less voting rights to those who have no vested interest in the 'mini democracy' except for financial ones. If the future of societies should be decided only by those who are actively involved in it (citizens/owners), why should this be any different?

Why should your property be dictated by people who hold no sense of attachment to the place beyond the financial?

Obviously if all owners decided to vote for the en-bloc sale to proceed, that is only fair and one cannot find fault with that. But more often than not, some owners are the minority, who do not wish to sell, and yet are often drowned out by greedy people (be it owners and/or investors).

Owners, SPs who have stayed in the property for more than 6 years, should have double the voting rights, compared to SPs who have stayed for less than 6 years. Those who stayed there long, should decide what to do with the place, not newcomers who care not for the place at all.

* Blais, A, Massicotte, L. and Yoshinaka, A. (2001), Deciding who has the right to vote: A comparative analysis of election laws. Electoral Studies, Vol 20, pp. 41-62.

Tags: collective sales, collective sale, enbloc, en-bloc, subsidiary proprietor, property, Singapore