The Housing Board should do more to regulate the rental prices at coffee shops in housing estates.

My husband and I frequent the coffee shop at Dawson Skyville.

We have come to know some of the stallholders and, for us, it has become a community of sorts.

We were therefore dismayed to learn that due to the exorbitant increase in monthly rental (roughly doubled), one of the stallholders was forced to relocate.

The HDB explained to us that it was unable to interfere with individual stallholders’ rentals charged by the eating house operator.

It also said it adopts a Price Quality Method tender for eating houses to consider, and if the eating house operator charges a high rental, it runs the risk of having many vacant stalls in the eating house.

The bargaining power between the eating house operator and the individual stallholders, many of whom are of average means, is patently unequal.

Rental prices, if largely left to the domain of private parties, can become unreasonable.

Many…



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