Housing

3 Quarks Daily - American homeownership peaked in 2004 at 69.4 percent and today hovers at around 65 percent which is still favorable to the entire 1960s when homeownership was around 63 percent. Imagine a country with 90 percent homeownership. Imagine what it would mean to have a society with that rate of homeownership – with that high a level of security and wealth accumulation. That’s exactly what Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister did. Although educated in economics and law at University, Lee Kuan Yew noticed as a child the differences between neighborhoods dominated by homeownership versus those that were mostly rented. Cleanliness, stability and low crime rates were among the benefits of an owned neighborhood. In 1965 when Singapore declared its independence both from the Malaysian Federation from which it was ejected and from the United Kingdom from which it was being decolonized, Singapore had a roughly 27 percent homeownership rate. Shockingly low. Going from 27 to 90 percent homeownership in less than 30 years was – as it sounds – no small feat. Singapore’s founding leaders were systems thinkers and saw the connections how certain actions could synergize to multiple benefits. MORE