16 May 2025: The rent is too damn high

Mynah Magazine has released their GE2025 podcast—recorded the day after Polling Day—and I'm in it! You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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This has been a problem for a loooong time and real estate doesn’t usually feature in this newsletter, but it’s also a deeply political matter. Over the past week this story about Flor Patisserie has been making the rounds. The bakery was forced to shut down its Siglap Drive outlet because the rent jumped by 57%. The landlord demanded a whopping $8,500 a month for a unit that doesn’t have parking and isn’t even that close to an MRT station. Instead of citing actual transaction prices—which were much lower—the landlord pegged “market rate” to the asking prices of units along the stretch, even though those units haven’t actually been taken. This case is emblematic of how commercial properties are seen first and foremost as investment vehicles rather than spaces where businesses (especially local small and medium enterprises) can realistically operate and flourish.

Another incisive (if rather defeatist) piece on capitalism and rent-seeking behaviour came from a surprising source this week: The PEAK Singapore, a luxury lifestyle magazine. There are many quotable excerpts from this piece, but I’ll highlight just one:

And perhaps the deepest tragedy lies precisely here: we’ve arrived at what philosophers might call the “capitalist event horizon” — the point beyond which no alternative vision can escape the gravitational pull of pure profit maximization. Landlords have quietly and insidiously ascended into the ultimate arbiters of our city’s culture and community. They are no longer the service provider — they are the customer, and tenants their obedient supplicants.

We have built a city where storefronts sit empty, waiting patiently for better-funded tenants, while dreams — authentic, community-centred dreams — die quietly behind shuttered roller gates. Better empty and expensive than affordable and occupied. Better sterile than sincere.

And why shouldn’t they? In a system that rewards maximum profit above all else, empty storefronts represent perfect economic logic.

What we’re witnessing today isn’t an aberration — it’s the logical endpoint of unleashing market forces without restraint. When we decided that all land should be valued at its highest possible economic potential, we made our bed. We declared that the meaning of space is not community, culture, or human connection. It is profit. That’s all.

Will these stories put more political pressure on the government to deal with this soul-crushing, rent-seeking culture? Or is the PAP far too entrenched in their pro-capital, pro-business (is it even pro-business if all sorts of local enterprises are getting crushed?) mindsets to do more than little tweaks? When our 15th Parliament sits, what will be said about this?

Responsibility lies with the parliamentarians who made all sorts of promises about looking out for Singaporeans’ interests during the election. But it lies with us, too, to be engaged and watchful. Both the PAP and the WP made commitments in their manifestos and speeches—it’s time to hold them to it and keep pushing for the changes that we want, and need, to see.

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These diners might want the matter to be put to rest as quickly as possible, but I’m not sure the issue can be wiped from Singaporean memories so easily. Warning shots have been fired: Ong Ye Kung and Chee Hong Tat, the health minister and transport minister, both sent lawyers’ letters to Sng Chia Huat, who posts on Facebook as “Rich Sng”, alleging that what he’d posted amounts to defamation. Ng Chee Meng, the labour chief, later followed up with his own legal love letter.

Sng had posted about the photos circulating of Ong, Chee and Ng being at dinners with Su Haijin, who's since been convicted of money laundering. The ministers said that these posts falsely claimed that they knew Su and had condoned his illegal activity. Ng’s letter said that Sng’s post had suggested an improper relationship between him and Su. All three demanded that Sng retract his allegations, issue a public apology and pay damages. Sng received these letters on 15 May and published apologies on Friday. He later added that he can’t afford to pay damages, and offered to do community service in lieu.

This might remind people to be much more careful about what they say online, but I doubt Singaporeans will move on from this so easily. It’s not just about being kaypoh about who politically powerful people dine with—there are legitimate questions about transparency, independent checks on power and safeguards to prevent corruption (which are important regardless of whether corrupt activities actually happened). The Singapore Democratic Party has called for a public and independent inquiry into the matter. They don’t have a parliamentary presence to bring it up in the House themselves, but will we see someone bring up something similar at the next sitting? (Looking at you, Workers' Party, because… well, there isn’t anyone else to look at.) I’m not expecting a public inquiry to actually happen, but it’s something worth raising anyway. If the PAP wants to reject such a suggestion, let them justify their decision on the record.

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We’ve got some post-GE2025 bits and pieces trickling in still. Overseas votes have been counted and are generally in line with the voting patterns of Singaporeans at home. The main differences are from Sembawang SMC and Bukit Panjang SMC: in the former, the SDP’s Chee Soon Juan beat PAP’s Poh Li San by two votes, while SDP’s Paul Tambyah drew with PAP’s Liang Eng Hwa in the latter. Neither is enough to change the official result.

Over at Rice Media, Jo Teo has a piece on the mathematical data behind GE2025. There’s lots of interesting stuff about voting power, representation and how discombobulating it can be to have the electoral boundaries change every time.

Meanwhile, Heng Swee Keat has ditched the East Coast Plan for a retirement plan. The self-identified workaholic says he intends to spend the next six to 12 months “not doing any work”. He wants to travel, read and listen to music. (I also want, tbh.)

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