Homeless Singapore

[Priamo Gregory]

Whatdoes it take for the homeless to get a permanent roof over their heads? The documentary, Homeless in Singapore, tracks a group of them over five months and uncovers gaps in the system as they work towards their goal.

A nationwide street count last year found 530 rough sleepers, while a 2021 study by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy found that the homeless in shelters numbered 420. In 2019, there were 921 rough sleepers and 65 people in shelters.

But more of them moving into transitional shelters, which are usually repurposed from old Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats. There are 680 units, each of which may be shared between up to six occupants, run by three operators.

Just how difficult is it to get out of homelessness? The three-part documentary, Homeless in Singapore, tracked five individuals and a family over five months to see what it might take to achieve that goal.

In their shelter, one washing machine is shared between four individuals. There is a roster to prevent conflicts, but when someone used the machine on a Sunday, which was not allowed, both men started to push each other.

While Roselan chafed at the lack of freedom in the shelter, Tok worried about his lack of money living outside as he was paying for a bed in a hostel while waiting for another night shelter to take him in.

Tok had been homeless for five months when CNA first filmed him. He worked as a forklift operator at container yards for 25 years before he got married in the Philippines, where he lived for 23 years.

He had managed to move into a new shelter, and if his joint rental application is successful, it might be about eight months to a year before it is time to choose a one-room flat from the available units.

Under the scheme, all applicants must apply in pairs. There is also an operator-run pilot scheme, which allows singles to apply without having to find a flatmate first. The operator will assign them flatmates, taking into consideration factors such as sex, age, ethnicity and living habits.

For Darius, who stayed with his girlfriend and then a friend after he left his night shelter, uncertainty may give way to hope as he awaits enlistment in National Service (NS). He has gone for his health check-up already.

In the case of Hamad, he would like his own rental unit, but if not, he said he would continue living outdoors. He had to shift his sleeping spot, however, after someone complained to the town council.

The second street count found that those sleeping on the streets fell by 41 per cent from 1,050 in 2019 to 616 last year, while those staying at a temporary shelter for the homeless shot up from 65 to 420 in the same time period.

Dr Ng Kok Hoe, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, led a team of researchers at the school's Social Inclusion Project to do the street count. They were aided by over 200 volunteers who pounded the streets, including combing 12,000 blocks of flats, late at night between February and April last year to count the number of people sleeping in public spaces.

The data on the number staying at temporary shelters for the homeless, which was provided by the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), was included for the first time in last year's count for a fuller understanding of the state of homelessness here.

He said government agencies and volunteers reached out to those sleeping rough during the circuit breaker in 2020 to refer them to shelters and many of the homeless, who were also concerned about their health and safety, decided to go into one.

Some religious and charity groups opened their premises for the homeless for the night, as demand for places in such Safe Sound Sleeping Places soared. Two new transitional shelters, which offer a longer stay, also started operation in January last year, the report said.

The HDB and the Ministry of National Development (MND) recognise the challenges some have applying for or sharing a rental flat and they have been reviewing and adjusting the Joint Singles Scheme in recent years, the MSF said in a statement in response to the street count.

For example, since December last year (2021), the HDB and MND started a pilot scheme where social service agencies match tenants with similar preferences and habits to share a flat. Under this pilot, singles can apply for a public rental flat by themselves, without having to find a flatmate first.

It cited the 57-member Partners Engaging and Empowering Rough Sleepers (Peers) Network, which comprises government agencies, religious groups and charities working together to ensure better coordination and synergy in the delivery of services to help the homeless.

And since April this year, the MSF has been working with partners from the Peers Network and academic advisers to plan regular street counts. The first such coordinated street count will take place by the end of the year.

A proposal was written to the Community Foundation of Singapore to utilise the Sayang Sayang Fund for the resources needed by clients. These cover 4 main aspects: a Digital Connectivity Fund to help alleviate isolation, a Special Support Fund to assist in casework, a Home Transition Fund to help clients settle into long-term housing options, and a Research Fund to further understand the nature of homelessness in Singapore.

While MWS has traditionally not specialised in tackling homelessness as an agency, we have learned much from the experience and found that the realities of homelessness resonated deeply with our vision to enable the disadvantaged and distressed to have life to the full.

For individual factors, a major finding from the research conducted by MWS was that 73% of all interviewees were faced with physical ailments, 29% said that everyday functions were affected by mental health issues, and 68% had 1 or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Of course, these individual factors bleed into the interpersonal, as mental health issues and ACEs are mostly the result of interpersonal factors such as abusive relationships. Systemic factors also weigh heavily on many of the homeless.

The rough sleepers also experienced some difficulty in accessing resources, finding it difficult to understand various government assistance schemes, application procedures and the reasons for approval or rejection.

In light of findings that more than half of rough sleepers experienced at least 1 adverse childhood experience, the team also saw benefits in adopting a trauma-informed approach to casework. This could be as simple as providing clients with clear timelines, and being transparent with eligibility criteria and procedures for applications to government schemes.

The MWS research team makes the following recommendations, centered around 3 main areas of building a community support network, reviewing existing policy measures, and the adoption of a trauma-informed lens:

However, as much as the agencies and social workers are working hard to assist the homeless, it is important to recognise that the homeless are not typecast as helpless. Instead, we should recognise the resilience in these individuals, who have been exposed to traumatic experiences, including rough sleeping.

With homelessness at a high due to the worsening economic and geopolitical conditions, how should we understand and approach the topic? It makes sense to approach the understanding of homelessness from the contemporary perspectives of poverty, of which homelessness is a subset of.

As a society, we need to go beyond the physical and material in our respective approaches to helping those who are in poverty. And in this case, to go even beyond the social, political and institutional. We need to maintain our perspective that no single experience of homelessness and poverty can be simplified into a single dimension; each experience and each life bears with it a different road, and a different challenge. Each experience deserves our love and respect.

In 2017, volunteers from the welfare organization Montfort Care and volunteer group SW101 conducted a survey focusing on issues that low-income individuals experienced. Within five hours of conducting the survey in 25 locations, the team found 180 people sleeping in public. Men comprised the majority of the homeless they found.

Homeless people in Singapore tend to stay vigilant and often try to avoid detection. It is not easy to tell them apart from other members of the public as they do not fit into the common stereotypical images of the destitute and vagrant homeless population. The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy study that found nearly 30% of the homeless found ways to maintain their appearance and look presentable.

The Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), as well as many other nongovernmental organizations, is working closely to help people in need and alleviate the problem of homelessness in Singapore. Over the past two years, MSF has been partnering with different community groups and government agencies to reach out to and assist the homeless population in Singapore. In July 2019, MSF launched the Partners Engaging and Empowering Rough Sleepers (PEERS) Network, bringing together 26 agencies to help the homeless in Singapore.

Homelessness in Singapore is easy to miss, but it is no doubt a chronic problem that has persisted for many years. Since homelessness is a complex issue that with no singular common cause, it requires multifaceted solutions to mitigate. The government has been working closely with different agencies and nongovernmental organizations. Commendable efforts have been made to address the issue by reaching out and providing both short and long-term support for the homeless in Singapore.

While HHOS was quieter this year in terms of publicity, we still had a lot of work to do. We realised that homeless families were one of the most vulnerable groups of people, with serious ramifications for their children. After witnessing a homeless family break up under the stress of homelessness and financial strain, we knew we had to step up in terms of providing greater support to homeless families. But in the same year, we also saw how the cost of renting flats on the open-market was soaring month after month, non-stop. That, combined with the shortage of rental flats and the backlog of shelters being full, and religious groups returning their spaces back to their normal services, would spell trouble for those struggling with housing instability. Furthermore, if local Singaporeans were facing these kind of crises, what about stateless people / vulnerable transnational families?

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