Is Malaysia’s Public Housing Cheap?

 

DBKL spends RM300 to maintain each public housing flat. It collects RM124 in rent. The maths only works one way. That is the monthly rental rate for a DBKL People's Housing Project flat. RM124. Less than most Malaysians spend on their weekly grocery run. A figure that has not been meaningfully revised in decades. And according to a new report, it is at the very heart of why Malaysia's public housing system is quietly heading toward collapse.

 

A report by Think City titled "From Roof to Resilience", highlighted by Malay Mail, found that stagnant rental rates and mounting rental arrears have rendered public housing in Malaysia financially unsustainable. The math, once you look at it clearly, is not complicated. It is just uncomfortable.

 

Source: https://ms.wikipedia.org

 

The actual cost of managing and maintaining each unit, covering cleaning, utility bills, lift maintenance, and public facilities, is estimated at RM300 per month. Every single month, DBKL loses RM176 per unit just by keeping the lights on and the lifts running. Across tens of thousands of units, that gap compounds into a structural financial problem that no amount of goodwill can paper over. Some of those arrears stretch back years. Some tenants have not paid in six months, a year, or longer.

 

Malaysia's public housing model was built on a philosophy of welfare provision. The government, through DBKL and other authorities, would build and manage affordable housing for the urban poor, charging rents low enough that even the most economically vulnerable could afford them. The social intention was noble and the political logic was clear. But the financial model was never fully thought through. Or if it was, the thinking was always that the government would absorb the shortfall indefinitely.

 

The Edge Malaysia reported as far back as 2024 that DBKL had failed to collect an estimated RM60 million in arrears accumulated over decades, and that the rental rate was insufficient to cover maintenance costs. The then-city hall management acknowledged the problem openly. Nothing materially changed.

 

Successive governments have maintained the low rental rates for political reasons. Raising rents on the urban poor is politically costly in a way that allowing the physical condition of public housing to gradually deteriorate is not. The deterioration happens slowly, spread across thousands of units, invisible in press conferences. A rent increase is immediate and measurable and generates complaints.

 

The result is a system where the average PPR flat now costs more to maintain per month than it earns in rental revenue, the building fabric is ageing without adequate funding for repairs, and hundreds of millions of ringgit in arrears sit uncollected because enforcement is difficult against people who genuinely cannot pay.

 

This brings us to the question at the heart of the whole debate. Who is actually responsible for the condition of public housing? Is it DBKL's responsibility to maintain every unit to a standard proportionate to the rent charged? Is it the resident's responsibility to maintain their own unit even if they are paying almost nothing? Or is the problem that the rent is so low it creates a psychological disconnect between what people pay and what they feel entitled to expect?

 

Most residents of PPR and PA flats are from B40 households. Young people who came to the city looking for work and found that even the cheapest private rental was beyond their reach. Families who have been on the waiting list for years and feel fortunate to have a roof at all. Single mothers, elderly residents on fixed incomes, new workers in their first jobs. These are not people gaming the system. They are people the system was designed to serve.

 

But a system that collects RM124 per unit and spends RM300 per unit to maintain it, while sitting on RM70 million in uncollected arrears in 2025, is not serving anyone well. Not the residents who deserve better maintained homes. Not the taxpayers who ultimately fund the gap. And not the long-term viability of affordable housing as a concept in Malaysian cities.

 

The Think City report's title, "From Roof to Resilience," implies a transformation rather than a patch. And that is exactly what is needed. Rental rates in public housing need to be reviewed and gradually adjusted to reflect at least a portion of the actual maintenance cost. Not in a single jump that shocks residents, but in a carefully phased increase accompanied by genuine improvements in maintenance standards. If rents go up even modestly and the lifts start working consistently, the bins get emptied on time, and the hallways are properly lit, most residents will accept the trade-off.

 

Reference:

Malaysia's Public Housing is Cheap. That is Exactly Why it is Falling Apart.

Opinion, Kamarul Azwan, Newswav, 30 May 2026

 

KL Low-Cost Housing Rent Arrears Reach RM70m, says Mayor, The Star, 18 May 2025