In a blog post today, Khaw Boon Wan wrote about how successful the Senior's Studio Apartment Scheme has been in supporting retirement needs.
He explained that on average, senior citizens have been able to unlock about $200,000 from the downgrading to studio apartments after paying off their old mortgages and the new studio flats.
He wrote that in the last 8 years, there have been about 7,600 studio apartments booked. Of these, 70% have been downgrades from 3 and 4 room flats.
Praising the efforts so far, Khaw Boon Wan wrote that the studio apartments have been planned well, giving an example of the recent set of studio apartments at Kampung Admiralty.
These flats are close to amenities like hawker centres, healthcare, childcare and eldercare as well as being integrated with regular flats so that seniors can choose to live near their children and grandchildren.
“We will continue to experiment and try out new layouts to see what will work best for our seniors, and to enable them to age actively where they live, in their familiar HDB town,” wrote Khaw.