HDB to convert 3- , 4-room blocks in Boon Lay, Woodlands into rental flats

By May Wong, Channel NewsAsia
15 February 2007

SINGAPORE: The Housing Board will convert 3 and 4-room blocks in Boon Lay and Woodlands into 1 and 2-room rental flats to help meet the demand for such flats.

It will also build about one thousand units of 1 and 2-room rental flats in the next few years.

The Minister of State for National Development Ms Grace Fu gave this update during question time in Parliament on Thursday.

Responding to questions from MP for Tanjong Pagar GRC Baey Yam Keng, Ms Fu said that every month, there are about 370 eligible applications for rental flats.

This means the HDB's stock of about 1,200 flats available for rent is being used up quickly.

Singapore currently has about 42,000 rental flats.

These make up about five percent of the total stock of flats. - CNA /dt

Plans for the future

Over a discussion this morning, plans for this blog seems promising. Getting in contact with students from schools in the Jurong area like JJC would help to unleash teams of fact finding miners into the depth of Jurong history and heritage, to uncover the richness in our treasure field.

Plan
1) Get in touch with JJC History or Geography teachers
2) Meeting with interested students
3) Discussion of possible projects
4) Student essays on the different facets of Jurong heritage
5) Posting on Jurong Stories
6) Expanding on these essays with multiple contributors

My dad is a Jurong kia

My father was born in 1948 in Jurong Road 12 milestones,an area now cleared and ready for pending development.

My father's daughter was born in 1981 in Boon Lay, just a short walk from where he was born.

Within 60 years, the change that has taken place in the vast area that was called Jurong is almost unimaginable. Previously of mangroves, farms, plantations and kampongs, today it is industrialized and see almost no ramnants of its rural past.

In fact, even the estate which I was born, a previously HUDC (JTC) built and owned workers' quarters has since been bought over by HDB and currently in the last phases of upgrading which will surely erase the unique qualities it has beared in Singapore's public housing architecture for the last 30 years. In the whole of Singapore, there are only no more than 5 estates that has buildings with this "point block" design where each level only has 4 units and each unit has 2 entrance/exits. Yet where these estates could be found, their layout are almost definitely identical and possibly evident of JTC's development.

Schools, cemeteries, temples and an exciting history of chinese diaspora in singapore could be found here in Jurong. All of which are also in danger of being forgotten. Most of which has already been exhumed, like the graves in the cemetery hill at Jurong Road 12 milestone.

As such, I decided to embark on a quest to attempt to record, document and archive as many of the stories and photographs as possible in my family's history and also in the history of Jurong. I thus decided to create a sister site of Pulau Ubin Stories and the Jurong Stories is born.