Feedback on "Vertical Kampung" Project at Admiralty and Plans to Expand These to Other Estates

13 Mr Desmond Choo asked the Minister for National Development (a) what has been the feedback from stakeholders of the Kampung Admiralty project; (b) whether the Ministry has plans to expand the number of "vertical kampungs" to better prepare the nation for an ageing population; and (c) if so, when and where will these projects be undertaken.

The Minister for National Development (Mr Desmond Lee): Sir, Kampung Admiralty is a first-of-its-kind development, which integrates housing for the elderly with a wide range of social, healthcare, communal, commercial and retail facilities. As the name suggests, we hope to foster a “kampung” spirit where residents of all ages live, interact and look out for one another. Feedback and outcomes from the project have been positive.

For instance, residents indicate that they feel a strong sense of well-being and belonging to their community. They also experienced high satisfaction in terms of ease of mobility, maintenance and safety in their estates. Service providers also reported that the co-location of facilities and close proximity to residents enabled them to form better partnerships with one another, especially when organising intergenerational activities.

Following the success of Kampung Admiralty, HDB launched the next integrated development, Heart of Yew Tee, at Yew Tee Close in 2021. This development will integrate housing for the elderly with community facilities, such as a hawker centre, polyclinic, community club and a kidney dialysis centre.

HDB will continue to explore opportunities to develop more of such “vertical kampungs”, to foster stronger community bonds amongst Singaporeans, taking into consideration the availability of suitable sites and the needs of residents.

Beyond launching such integrated developments, HDB also takes a concerted approach in designing our residential spaces to encourage inter-generational bonding and bring greater convenience to our residents, for example, by co-locating childcare and eldercare facilities, where possible, in new BTO developments. For the upcoming November BTO exercise, we will be launching our second Community Care Apartments (CCAs) pilot situated within the Health District at Queenstown. CCAs will be built together with the BTO flats in the same precinct, promoting intergenerational bonding as seniors living at CCAs and young families living nearby will all be part of the same community.

Mr Speaker: Mr Desmond Choo.

Mr Desmond Choo (Tampines): I thank the Minister for his response. I have two points for clarification.

First, clearly, there is a very strong demand for such integrated projects. May I ask the Minister what is the approximate demand and whether we will be able to supply and meet that demand for vertical kampungs around the island? Certainly, many of the residents in Tampines do look forward to that.

Second, I am very glad to hear about the different community care type of housing that is being built, obviously, taking into consideration that it is not possible to build all new ones. What is the scope to repurpose existing flats by adding new facilities to create them into kampungs even within existing flats?

Mr Desmond Lee: As I mentioned, integrated kampungs like Kampung Admiralty and the upcoming Heart of Yew Tee are efforts to vertically integrate services that we think would be beneficial to our seniors, beneficial to intergenerational bonding and also beneficial to social and community partners who want to work much closer together to support our seniors. These kinds of developments, we have got one more coming up. We will look at opportunities to develop more, where possible. But, again, it depends on land availability. And as we study the first and, of course, the upcoming Heart of Yew Tee project, we continue to glean learnings from that as we look for opportunities to try out further integrated kampung-type amenities. Principally, they also save land by maximising the plot of land.

The Member asked about whether it is possible to repurpose existing flats. That has been our effort all this while. For seniors, there is a whole range of options – ageing in place, as I discussed earlier with Mr Liang Eng Hwa, both living in their existing flats and having monetisation options but also downsizing to a smaller flat and getting a Silver Housing Bonus. For those who live in situ, we have the Enhancement for Active Seniors (EASE) programme where we put in grab bars, non-slip flooring in the toilet, ramps and, even in the front of the flat, wheelchair lifters and ramps for wheelchairs, if necessary. And will continue to study what more can be done in order to make our homes more senior-friendly. In that regard, HDB works very closely with the Agency for Integrated Care and the community to support our seniors living in situ, living in their existing flats.

But, already, we have in the community active ageing centres, eldercare centres that provide programming as well as some degree of care for our seniors. And that is work that we do very closely with MOH and the Agency for Integrated Care and we will continue to see how we can further strengthen the tie-up between the social and community facility for seniors, surrounding partners and community agencies and RCs.