Worries over side effects of home-sharing have dogged sector

The Singapore Airbnb host is not raking in the big money.

In fact, he earns only about $5,120 a year.

On average, he receives guests for just 45 nights each year.

“There is a thought that this is a full-time occupation,” Airbnb’s Asia Pacific regional director Julian Persaud told The Straits Times last week.

“(But) the average amount of time our hosts are renting out is like three or four days a month.”

Revealing its Singapore numbers for the first time, Mr Persaud said that the reality of its Singapore operations is a unique one, where home rentals shorter than six months are deemed illegal.

Because of this, home-sharing businesses have had to tread a fine line – as opposed to other markets where hosting has become a lucrative business, with many earning high four-figure monthly earnings.

Despite this, Airbnb, one of the biggest players in the market, has about 7,000 property listings here as of last month.

Some 242,400 visitors have also checked into Airbnb lodgings here in the past year.

The San Francisco-based firm also set up its regional headquarters in Singapore in 2012.

But concerns over the side effects of home sharing have plagued the sector, with residents raising concerns about safety and noise from transient tourists in their backyard.

Hotels have also questioned hygiene and safety standards of unregulated accommodation.

And Mr Persaud stressed that safety is the “number one” priority for Airbnb.

“The most important to us is the safety of our community. And if we don’t have that, we don’t have a business,” he said, adding that the portal has a slew of measures to mitigate any potential issues. These include a verified identification process for guests and hosts and reviews for both parties.

In June, it also rolled out a new Neighbour Tool which allows neighbours of hosts to flag any concerns they have about Airbnb listings.

When asked for the number of reported cases via this tool in Singapore, Mr Persaud said it was “negligible”.

He added that problems arising from Airbnb arrangements are generally rare.

Of the 17 million tourists who used Airbnb last summer, there were fewer than 300 urgent customer service calls, he said.

Mr John Kim, president of Texas-based vacation rental site HomeAway, also said that complaints about disturbances from guests are “very much the exception”.

HomeAway, which comes under parent company Expedia, lets hosts rent out only whole homes.

Public sentiment is likely to feature prominently in the debate on whether home sharing in Singapore will be given the green light.

Last year, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) ran a public consultation to see whether there was a need to review short-term rental rules for private housing.

It said in May this year that it needs more time to study the matter as views are split.

Those in favour of short rentals argue that it can help boost tourism and cultural exchanges between hosts and guests.

Noting that 78 per cent of Airbnb listings are outside main tourist areas such as Orchard, Mr Persaud said home rentals can bring tourist dollars into other areas.

LOOKING FOR CLARITY

“We’re very keen for them (the URA) to kind of push forward and make a ruling on it because I think our guests and hosts and community of Singaporeans that want to rent out their homes on an occasional basis… are looking for clarity,” Mr Persaud said.

The Government has hinted that there could be room for regulations to co-exist with home sharing here.

National Development Minister Lawrence Wong told The Straits Times in October that while he understands the misgivings about home sharing, attitudes may change and Singapore is not closing the door on it.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said at the APEC CEO Summit in Peru last month that old rules may no longer be relevant to disruptive economic activities such as Airbnb, but stressed that regulations are still necessary.

Mr Persaud said he hopes his company can adopt a collaborative approach with regulators here.

He said: “We know that in Singapore it’s kind of a unique situation of the housing stock (where public housing forms the majority of homes).

“It’s very different from most of the world actually in terms of that and we’re very cognizant of that.

“We as a company and as an organisation have a broad mission where people can belong.

“And… the last thing we want to do is to promote any sort of issues in the local community.”

This article was first published on December 06, 2016.
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Even as more parents are leaving their newborns to be looked after in childcare centres, the majority still prefer to care for their babies themselves or enlist the help of family members, nannies and domestic workers.

About 4,000 infants, aged between 18 months and two, are enrolled in childcare centres now, said Senior Minister of State Josephine Teo, who oversees the National Population and Talent Division (NTPD), yesterday.

This is a big jump of 60 per cent compared to enrolment in 2012. Despite this, nine in 10 parents still prefer not to send their babies to childcare centres.

Mrs Teo sees the growing number as a call for action.

Speaking on the sidelines of a visit to a Skool4kidz childcare centre in Tampines, she said: “If we want to provide better support to millennial families, this is an area that we want to look into.

“Increasingly, I think more of these millennial families are going to turn to centre-based care in order to have peace of mind at work.”

At the centre, a qualified caregiver, called “educarer”, oversees five infants at any one time. They feed, bathe, play and bond with the infants.

It charges $1,360, before subsidy, a month for full-day infant care.

INCREASE

Dr Faishal Ibrahim, Parliamentary Secretary for Ministry of Social and Family Development, which oversees the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), said the ECDA has already ramped up the number of infant care places by 32 per cent since 2013 to 6,900 this year.

Dr Faishal, who also visited the Tampines childcare centre, said ECDA is looking into building large childcare centres in areas where there are more younger families with young children.

He said: “So we are moving in quite aggressively in these areas.”

The infant care numbers are a fraction of those enrolled in childcare centres.

Childcare enrolment hit a high of 95,414 last year – more than double the 44,224 in 2005.

Chairman of the Association of Early Childhood and Training Services T. Chandroo said most parents do not place their infants in childcare centres because they do not feel comfortable leaving their babies in the hands of an external party.

Mrs Teo said more parents are opting for infant care services now as mothers and grandparents, or mature workers, are choosing to go back or remain in the workforce.

During the visit, Mrs Teo also shared findings of a recent survey of 1,500 parents done by NTPD.

Parents whose infants were cared for by family members were asked whether they preferred to turn to nannies, domestic workers or centre-based care should they have no family members to rely on during weekdays.

Most of the parents, or 83 per cent, indicated that they preferred or accepted centre-based care compared to 63 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively, for nannies and unsupervised domestic workers.

Slightly more than half of the stay-at-home parents who were caring for their infants indicated that they would prefer to work if there was an adequate care arrangement for their infants.

Mother of two Loo Keng Yin, 41, has tried both – bringing up her daughter on her own and tapping on infant care services for her younger son.

Seven years ago, she cared for her daughter herself as she was not working then.

When she started work as an IT software consultant in 2011, she was prepared to put her two-month-old son in a centre, but could not find a place for him. She eventually enrolled him in a centre when he was eight months old.

“There are pros and cons to being in a centre. There is someone experienced there to guide them on developmental goals and nutrition and they get to socialise more, but they may catch illnesses more easily,” said Ms Loo. “But I find that because my son was put in the centre since young, he is more independent and less choosy about food.”

This article was first published on December 06, 2016.
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PAP town councils to act on recommendations in Lift Taskforce study

Over the next five years, PAP Town Councils will pump in a total of $45 million to make lifts safer and more reliable.

This comes after yesterday’s release of a preliminary study from the PAP Lift Taskforce headed by Dr Teo Ho Pin, PAP town councils’ coordinating chairman.

The taskforce suggested that the 15 PAP town councils conduct cost analysis to track maintenance and replacement expenditure.

Formed in July after a spate of serious accidents involving lifts, the taskforce also recommended additional checks and preventive maintenance above the requirements of the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) for five critical lift components such as door mechanisms and brakes.

It suggested that each lift undergoes an average of 100 minutes of lift servicing each month, subject to the number of lift landings.

Other recommendations include installing a lift surveillance system in each lift to provide 24-hour monitoring for safety and rescue purposes and the development of a dashboard management system to monitor the performance of lifts and lift contractors.

Currently, there are 24,000 lifts in public housing estates islandwide.

In July, BCA recommended that all lift owners update their older lifts with several features that are found in newer models.

Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong told Parliament in September that HDB will implement a new Lift Enhancement Programme (LEP), which will cost an estimated $450 million.

The programme, to be rolled out over a period of 10 years, is aimed at refurbishing existing lifts under 18 years old.

CO-FUNDED

The Government will co-fund around 90 per cent of the town councils’ costs to install the enhancement features.

The Taskforce said the PAP town councils will give priority for LEP implementation based on the age and performance of the lifts.

In a separate media release yesterday, the Workers’ Party-run Aljunied-Hougang Town Council said it will spend about $17.5 million over the next five years to replace ageing lifts.

This will be funded mainly through the town council’s sinking fund.

AHTC chairman Pritam Singh said that its town council’s lift department continues to review the scope of maintenance works required by each age group of lifts to identify possible areas to improve maintenance.

The AHTC, which manages more than 1,700 lifts, said it plans to progressively schedule lifts nearing the 15-year mark of their lifespan for HDB’s LEP.

Under HDB guidelines, lifts are scheduled for major upgrading or replacement after 28 years of being in operation.

The AHTC said some older lifts had critical parts that became obsolete earlier, “contributing to frequent breakdowns”, and will be replaced ahead of the 28-year guideline.

On Oct 6, it issued a tender for the installation of 20 new lifts in Aljunied GRC.

Over the next four years, it will call similar tenders to replace selected lifts.

Cabby Stephen Tan, 56, who lives in Pasir Ris where the lifts are over 20 years old, is willing to pay more for maintenance and hopes that his lifts will be replaced soon.

The father of three said: “There are more elderly people here, and I am scared for them because of the possible danger with the lifts.

“I believe that the cost would not be much because it is shared, and I am willing because this is for everybody’s safety.”

This article was first published on December 06, 2016.
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